Reviews of Chop Shop
Displaying all 2 reviews
Maicol Andrés Ordoñez
12Jan10
Man! This guy Bahrani is totally moving on my job as the American neorealist (at least I hope to be) but hey so far he’s just east coast. This flick is the real deal and at no moment does it ask for pity from us as viewers. We see this young kid working the streets with his sister getting barked at, cheated, or pushed around by older folks who work in the junkyards of Queens but we can’t weep over it because within this film there are no villains. Anyone who does ‘ill will’ to our protagonists probably lived very similar lives as kids and it formed them into the tough hustlers that they are. There is no room for crying. In the small city block, with its cheap streets, piss yellow streetlights, junk all around, and with a looming, cheering baseball stadium standing beyond it, the one recognizable symbol of ‘the big apple’, this is where cinema is made.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.
Teddy Cheong
25Apr09
Allow me to be frank: Chop Shop is a movie that makes neorealism look like Hollywood. Dwelling in gutters and dilapidated auto centers, ‘dirty’ becomes an aesthetic preference that suits the hard knock life bestowed upon Alejandro and his sister. Bahrani either shared a similar lifestyle growing up or he has an incredible eye for observation because I’ve seen kids just like this selling bootleg DVDs and working odd temp jobs just to make quick cash. For kids like this, it’s easy to get trapped in a cycle of desperation and day-to-day survival. But rather than focus on despair and depression, the central character is determined and optimistic about his goal – and that made all the difference by the time it ended. And the ending was pitch perfect.
- Currently 5.0/5 Stars.