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Chop Shop
Universal acclaim
Based on 20 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 13 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama
Written by: Ramin Bahrani
Directed by: Ramin Bahrani
Release Date:
Theatrical: February 27, 2008
DVD: July 8, 2008
Running Time: 84 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Alejandro Polanco, and Isamar Gonzales
Alejandro spends his days in an adult world, running errands and convincing customers to come to his boss's garage instead of a competitor's garage. He's also learning how to paint and repair cars. Although conditions are harsh, his life is sprinkled with moments of happiness as he carves out a life for himself in the wasteland of the Iron Triangle. The brightest of these moments is the arrival of his sister Isamar, who moves in with him in the tiny room that he has found for them perched in the back of the shop where he works. Knowing that creating a better life for the two of them is their best bet at staying together, Alejandro finds her a job in a food van cooking and selling meals to the workers in the Iron Triangle. With a mixture of childlike naiveté and adult ambition, Alejandro begins obsessively saving his money to buy a mobile food van. The two dream about owning and running a small business of their own. But when their dream--as well as their loving relationship--is threatened by the hard truths of life, work, and one another, the children find themselves forced to make the kinds of difficult decisions that most adults never have to face. (Koch Lorber)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Man Push Cart
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Now we have an American film with the raw power of “City of God” or “Pixote,” a film that does something unexpected, and inspired, and brave.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Ken Fox
Bahrani's willingness to expose the shameful reality of third-world conditions in the Land of Plenty while telling a crackling good story marks him as a filmmaker as important as he is accessible.
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea
Beautifully observed, and beautifully acted by the novice thespian Polanco (culled from a New York City public school), Chop Shop is at once a heartbreaker and a story of hope and the American Dream.
Read Full Review >Washington Post John Anderson
The director has created a not-to-miss gem for the discriminating viewer.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir
Announces the arrival of a director radically out of step with the dominant conventions of American moviemaking, one who blends a social-realist vision and a passion for cinematic poetry.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jack Mathews
Ale's community is like a band of pirates - collegial, bickering, larcenous and supportive - and his life within it is both heartening and heartbreaking.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
Small but sure, the film is like Alejandro himself: quick on its feet, attuned to a harsh life’s hardships and possibilities.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Everything about Chop Shop is modest - the movie's scale, the characters' ambitions. Another director might have tried to nudge the film's grim detours toward tragedy. And that might have worked, too. But Bahrani is a refreshingly deceptive director in that sense.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
It's like a New York City equivalent of a Third World bazaar: It hums with nerviness and cunning. And this movie presents a tingling vision of a working neighborhood after hours. Night falls in Chop Shop like a comfort, a cloak or a shroud.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
Though Chop Shop is an American film, it feels more like an Iranian movie or the Dardenne Brothers’ "Rosetta"; Bahrani introduces something like a plot point in the late-going, but he mostly focuses, to riveting effect, on how his young hero hustles and claws through everyday life.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
Iranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has followed up his well-received Man Push Cart with another penetrating portrait of life on the outskirts of New York.
Read Full Review >New York Magazine David Edelstein
Bahrani’s concentration is close to supernatural as he tracks the young, prepubescent Ale (Alejandro Polanco) from job to soul-numbing job, some legal, some extralegal, to the point where you’re forced to suspend altogether your moral judgments and watch with a mixture of pain and awe.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Nathan Lee
Authentic as all this feels (and smells, and tastes), Chop Shop gives off a heightened sense of reality, a faintly idealized atmosphere akin to the Lower East Side milieu of "Raising Victor Vargas," a close relative in the New York branch of neo-neorealism.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
There is nonetheless a lyricism at its heart, an unsentimental, soulful appreciation of the grace that resides in even the meanest struggle for survival.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader J.R. Jones
In this littered environment there's no such thing as trash, only salvage, and the biggest threat to the siblings' humanity is a creeping tendency to think of themselves as commodities as well.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Chop Shop"exudes a sense of joyousness amid harshness. Bahrani celebrates those who never give up, no matter how badly their dreams are shattered.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
Bahrani's unsentimental film is perhaps most interesting as a look at a colorful, little-known world that has recently been targeted for urban renewal.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
Ultimately, the pic will be noted and remembered not for any inherent drama or analysis but for its simply having so thoroughly documented a strange place most people have never seen and never knew existed.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
As he did in his striking 2005 first feature film, "Man Push Cart," about a Pakistani street vendor in New York, perceptive indie filmmaker Ramin Bahrani looks at what others overlook and finds drama in everyday details.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Bill White
It is ironic that the core audience for Chop Shop is that very crowd that has recently taken steps to redevelop the Iron Triangle into something more Manhattan-friendly.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 13 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Matthew F. gave it a9:
Absolutely damn brilliant. Know going in, this isn't "Slumdog Millionaire" , this is a cold dose of ice water thrown in your face abut America. IT's spare, gritty and realistic.It's also beautiful. There isn't a giant plot to hang a bunch of phony drama on , just the drama of unrelenting everyday life. Brilliant.
John C. gave it an8:
Listen. It doesn't have a exact hollywood narrative or feel, but that shouldn't be a knock against the film. There are countless ways to tell a story, this one has more compassion for it's young characters then anything coming from a big studio. It's not perfect but I guarantee the subject and the world are riveting. IF we can feel for 3d robots/cars, why not for this youngster?
Ben M. gave it a6:
Disappointing; being the top rated dvd in metacritic i expected something amazing. instead i felt like this was filmmaking for the sake of the filmmaker; not for the audience. Some great imagery, but generally pointless.
Robert F. gave it a0:
Quite possibly... no it is the worst movie I've ever seen in my entire life. I kept watching just to see if something was going to happen. It was pointless from beginning to end. Nothing happens... don't waste your time on this one.
Slaine E. gave it a10:
Wicked, deep, heavy, the reality that some kids live.
Nick M. gave it a4:
Bahrani's portrayal of the Bronx and urban life is amazing, but there's too much lacking to make it a successful story. The actors feel young and palpably directed, and the plot lumps along until the end, missing on what should be its climax. A documentary treatment of the Bronx would have been as vivid, and come off with more authenticity in characters. No seriously.
