Chop Shop Movie
Storyline
TAGLINES PLOT SUMMARY
Alejandro, a tough and ambitious Latino street orphan on the verge of adolescence, lives and works in an auto-body repair shop in a sprawling junkyard on the outskirts of Queens, New York. In this chaotic world of adults, young Alejandro struggles to make a better life for himself and his 16-year-old sister, Isamar.
| Alejandro Polanco | Ale |
| Ahmad Razvi | Ahmad |
| Carlos Zapata | Carlos |
| Rob Sowulski | Rob |
| Walter Albia | Cell Phone Customer 3 |
| Angelo Carillo | Worker of Willet's Point |
| Sherman Alpert | Truck 'John' |
| Pedro Altamirano | Ahmad's Worker 1 |
| Carlos Ayala | Carlos the Pigeon Worker |
| Bedford T. Bentley | Broken Mirror Customer |
| Raoul Chucaralao | Ahmad's Worker 2 |
| Nicholas Corelisco | Ahmand's Friend |
| Cesar Di Parra | Car Thief 2 |
| Nicholas Elliott | Subway Customer |
8.10 out of 10 (99 votes)
Visitor Reviews
welcome to the slums of NYC
posted on 17 Jul 2009my girlfriend, as we walk in the cold London evening in leicester square, after the movie, says: if they didn't speak English and they didn't show the stadium, you could have thought this was the slums of a South American city or some other slum anywhere in the world,not Queens in NYC.Ramin Bahrani is , right now, my official hero, because he seems to have devoted his work to show not the OTHER face of American, but the REAL face of America.Ramin Bahrani's movies are like Ladri di biciclette, or Germania anno zero, or Roma citta' aperta. Chop shop is reality turned into a movie, is more realistic than a documentary, in fact I think Ramin Bahrani's movies are more realistic than documentaries. This is a great movies, but don't expect any car chase or shooting. This movie is about tragic lives on the margin of the wealthiest , richest country in the world.
A low budget movie with an Ethnic Flair
posted on 17 Jun 2009Some critics have compared Chop Shop with the theatrical releases of City of God and Pixote. I've seen both of those as well as Chop Shop and like in many instances, I don't feel the comparison is warranted. City of God and Pixote surely had a much higher budget. Chop Shop is a low budget independent film about survival and hope, disappointment, and continuing with life. One of the scenes is allegedly filmed during the US Open and either the filmmakers had incredible connections or the scene was filmed at another time and the US open footage was added. I say that because I live in the area where this movie was filmed and security is insane while the tennis matches are in progress. It's also noteworthy that the actors actual names were their character's names in the movie. Back to the movie. It's an enjoyable story about survival. However, it ended up getting a 7 because... at times the actors acted extremely well. At other times, they appeared to be just reciting their lines. If the actors were less competent (as they were in the low budget "The Big Dis" for example) I would have been more forgiving. But in several scenes each and every one of these actors gave exemplary performances. At other times, they appeared bored. The director might be at fault here. I also had problems with the ending. This is one of those movies that "just ends". Maybe there will be a part 2? Definitely worth getting on DVD. I wont bother summing up the story because that info is already available on IMDb.
Silent, slow pace but stunning
posted on 04 May 2009A friend brought me this movie and at first I was hesitating, the pace in the movie was so slow that it was admittedly boring at the beginning. But the life scenes were attractive, it's like observing than watching. It turned out to be simply stunning throughout the film, the way how the director handled the life scenes to reflect the reality was confounding but somehow also overwhelming. It's like understanding the real life of a lively person than watching a movie. Mr Alejandro Polanco and Miss Isamar Gonzales did their roles so well that it's more like telling us their own stories. Indeed they used their real names in the movie.
I watched this movie in Toronto International Film Festival
posted on 24 Apr 2009This is one of those movies when you are watching it you wonder whether it is documentary or fiction. After the movie, Ramin Bahrani answered many questions and we learned that the movie has a script.Bahrani's camera is silent, he is not judgmental, he almost erases director from the movie by purpose, background is not organized to make the picture pretty, however don't get me wrong; there is a lot of preparation for this movie. Starting on personal level, being the part of environment, being to be ignored when you film.Main character is a 'real' actor in every sense.I would like to thank all crew for this movie, showing us another country within NYC. I strongly suggest it if you like stories of others.Bora Kizilirmak
Chop Shop
posted on 18 Apr 2009The film chop shop is a nice little drama film about an orphan brother and sister living in a chop shop in queens New York. The cinematography in chop shop was done very well, and the actual story was good, but the script had to much useless lines. The worst thing in this film to me was the acting, the actors felt like first timers. The main character was a little boy who spoke loudly most of the time and acted like he was older then his older sister. I felt like they had the screenplay in there hands as the film was going on. With this film the director was trying to show people how a kid could live basically homeless but it seemed like nothing to everyone else around him. The kid didn't go to school but worked and hustled everyday. The film was slow pace, with not that much action going on, a really quiet and subtle film. When things did happen it wasn't that big or stunning to effect you that much. The visuals put the audience in the world of a poor, hardworking Spanish junk yard away from the rest of New York. Overall the film was great to see but the acting felt unrealistic.
amazing how much can be done with a low budget .
posted on 10 Apr 2009i was very impressed with this production on likely all levels; from production to plot and character development.this definitely fall under the "realism" genre, since there is nothing going on here that makes use of creative imagination, twists, or manipulating audience in how a viewer shall feel, think and asses.the actors are great, especially the "little" ones. the chemistry between the brother and the sister is mind blowing, maybe not even as common as should be in real life. it is a movie excellent to literally watch while visualizing it. one knows when a movie is good when one just does not want it to end, but eventually everything does...
Bahrani doesn't impress me much
posted on 26 Jan 2009I remember finding Ramin Bahrani's first film, Man Push Cart, a fairly good debut, but one that lacked any real depth. He hasn't grown much in his sophomore feature, Chop Shop. It also focuses on the urban immigrant poor. The main characters of this film are homeless Hispanic orphans, Ale and his teen sister Izzy. Ale is employed at a junkyard, and he gets his sister a job with his boss's wife. The two plan to save their money to buy a food delivery truck, on which Ale has been told he can get a good deal. The film has one conflict that gives it a little energy, when Ale learns that his sister is working nights as a prostitute. It's at its strongest when it's concentrating on Ale's anger and confusion. He begins to act out by committing crimes, which get progressively more serious. The film doesn't have a lot going on, but with this plot point giving the film a mild psychological complexity, it's a decent watch. Unfortunately, the film craps out at the end with a lame, forced plot twist that so ridiculously echoes the one at the end of Man Push Cart that Bahrani should be embarrassed to have went with it. And that final shot is pseudo-poetic trash. Well, it impresses Roger Ebert, anyway.
Recommend as a sort of dark fairy tale
posted on 20 Jan 2009Can't say this wasn't made well. At a recent film festival the director admitted some scenes took 30 takes. And there isn't the slightest indication he didn't get exactly what he wanted. But this is an oddly non-Hispanic film in the same way West Side Story was many years ago. Both the leads, a brother-sister team, are excellent and memorable in their parts. The setting, a sort of underground car repair district in Queens, is completely foreign to most people and is worth the price of admission by itself. But there's something unsatisfying about the key issue in the film, namely, what the sister feels she has to do to get by. I can understand the brother's reaction, but it just seems a little too easily come by to me. The movie seems to suggest that people like these don't need our help, that they'll find a way to survive without the usual support systems. I wouldn't encourage anyone to believe that. There would be far more resistance to the choices made here than depicted. Other than that as an entertainment it works well. As an accurate depiction of a culture, not so well, I think.
A pre - teen Latino boy struggles to make a life for him and his sister on the back streets of New York.
posted on 21 Aug 2008Chop Shop. Written and directed by Ramin Bahrani ( Man Push Cart). Bahrani specializes in character driven studies in naturalist style films about the sort of little people that get passed by every day, without anyone ever really noticing they are there, in New York. These are people who have been pushed to the very fringe of society. They exist in a sort of grey world, many of them migrants whose legal status in America is appears somewhat doubtful. Where do they come from ? How did they get there ? How do they cope ? Where will they end up ? These are not feel good stories as such, but stories about survival at its most basic, day to day level. Ale is one such street kid. He has no education and hustles anyway he can, to save money, he is also not beyond turning to petty theft. Mostly he is anxious to be reunited with his older sister. We see him in the early scenes ringing a safe house looking for her, but not having any real success. A young friend, Carlos gets him a job in a chop shop, in the shadows of Shea baseball stadium. Eventually his older sister comes to live on site with him, but he is jealous of the motives of her friends and suspicious of how she makes extra money. He dreams of buying a food van and setting up a vending business with his older sister. Bahrani shoots all his films on location. There is nothing glossy or glossed over about them. This is life as these people have to live it, in the raw. lt is not pretty although it is never ominous, and the slightly despairing air that hangs over much of the film, is the same one that hangs over these peoples' everyday lives.The script is also very natural and the characters are given plenty of scope and room to work in. Polanco is outstanding in the lead role, and Gonzalez gives solid support as the older sister.
Chop Shop Stunning and Majestic
posted on 25 Feb 2008The majesty of Ramin Bahrani's second feature is that, like the work of a poet, he portrays the very soul of humanity and lets it flourish on the screen. Beyond the scope of most other indie films out there, CHOP SHOP is wise, exuding the very best of the great cinema of the ages; we can look back at the works of Bresson and Pasolini and compare Bahrani's work to theirs, and yet CHOP SHOP is fresh and urgent to modern society. We can see the workings of a master here – a certain sense of beauty, style, and content all merge together in a film that reminds us what it means to be alive. Instead of focusing on the side of NYC we so often see, we live and breathe with our young hero, Alejandro, in the destitute Willits Point – a fascinating quasi-sub-world of our culture – and yet it's a very, very real place. Trying to stay afloat, Alejandro has to support himself and his older sister. Watch this film and feel the sense of raw spiritual understanding that Bahrani leads us toward – all with profound and concise realism.
Movie about a soul
posted on 30 Jan 2008This is marvelous movie, about a soul of Ale. This is a journey to Ale's heart. I found it fascinating. The director did a great job. He makes the scenes talk. Especially on the silent scenes. The window of Ale is a great one. An the scenes when he lies in bed are one of the best directed scenes I have seen. Apart from directing. It has been a quite time I did not watch a movie about a soul. As a philosopher I can say that, this film proves that the age does not matter about your soul. So as Ale's soul. As living in Turkey I do not care about the other side of NY. This is a universal scene you can see everywhere in the world. As to my opinion more universal than every other thing. Do not miss this film. Otherwise you will miss a great thing about a soul. If you have one. Baris.Sentuna
A poignant character study
posted on 23 Dec 2007Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco), called Ale for short, works at an auto-body repair shop in what has come to be known as the Iron Triangle, a deteriorating twenty block stretch of auto junk yards and sleazy car repair dealers close to Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. Here customers do not question whether or not parts come from stolen cars or why they are able to receive such large discounts, they simply put down their cash and hope that everything is on the up and up. Sleazy outskirts like these are not highlighted in the tour guides but Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani puts them on vivid display in Chop Shop, a powerful Indie film that received much affection last year at Cannes, Berlin, and Toronto. A follow up to his acclaimed "Man Push Cart", Bahrani spent one and a half years in the location that F. Scott Fitzgerald described as in the Great Gatsby as "the valley of the ashes".For all its depiction of bleakness, Chop Shop is not a work of social criticism but, like Hector Babenco's Pixote, a poignant character study in which a young boy's survival is bought at the price of his innocence. Shot on location at Willets Point in Queens, Bahrani makes you feel as if you are there, sweating in a hot and humid New York summer with all of its noise and chaos. The film's focus is on the charming, street-smart 12-year-old Ale who lives on the edge without any adult support or supervision other than his boss (Rob Sowulski), the real-life proprietor of the Iron Triangle garage. Polanco's performance is raw and slightly ragged yet he fully earned the standing ovation he received at the film's premiere at Cannes along with a hug from great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami.Cramped into a tiny room above the garage together with his 16-year-old sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales) who works dispensing food from a lunch wagon, Ale is like one of the interchangeable spare parts he deals with. While he has dreams of owning his own food-service van, in the city that never sleeps, he knows that the only thing that may make the "top of the heap" is another dented fender. In this environment, Ale and Isi use any means necessary to keep their heads above water while their love for each other remains constant and they still laugh and act out the childhood that was never theirs. As Barack Obama says in his book "Dreams From My Father", the change may come later when their eyes stop laughing and they have shut off something inside. In the meantime, Ale supplements his earnings by selling candy bars in the crowded New York subways with his friend Carlos (Carlos Zapata) and pushing bootleg DVDs on the street corners, while Isi does tricks for the truck drivers to save enough money to buy the rusted $4500 van in which they hope to start their own business.Though Ale is a "good boy", he is not above stealing purses and hubcaps in the Shea Stadium parking lot, events that Bahrani's camera observes without judgment. In Chop Shop, Bahrani has provided a compelling antidote to the underdog success stories churned out by the Hollywood dream factory, and has given us a film of stunning naturalism and respect for its characters, similar in many ways to the great Italian neo-realist films and the recent Iranian works of Kiarostami, Panahi, and others. While the outcome of the characters is far from certain, Bahrani makes sure that we notice a giant billboard at Shea Stadium that reads, "Make dreams happen", leaving us with the hint that, in Rumi's phrase, "the drum of the realization of that promise is beating,"
Doing what it takes to survive
posted on 29 Nov 2007I enjoyed Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, and this film is equally good. This slice of life is almost a documentary about how life on the edges is lived.Alejandro Polanco and Isamar Gonzales do an excellent job as a 12-year-old brother and a 16-year-old sister who live in a small room over an auto shop. There are no parents; they are on their own surviving. Ali supplements his income by stealing auto parts, selling bootleg DVDs and selling candy on the subway. Izzie supplements her income working a food truck by selling herself. They are trying to make money to but their own truck.One is tempted to express outrage at the fact that these two children are left to fend on their own, and certainly one can be very upset that Izzie sells her body to willing truckers, but the fact is that this exists today in the world's richest country, not some underdeveloped land. Save the outrage and do something.
Real
posted on 23 May 2007This almost documentary look at an enterprising boy who lives in the body shop area outside of New York is real all the way. Real lighting. Real sound. Less editing in the whole movie than in 1 minute of most movies. And while there is very little script, there is a story. Shot in primary colors, almost all red, white, blue and yellow, we get a real sense of the life of a boy who is making something from nothing. He has a place to live that he makes his own, has a good job, and is trying to bring his sister into his little universe. The people in the chop shop area also give us a look at this culture which I didn't know about. They mostly seem decent and pay Ale what seems like daily, seeming truly concerned about his well being. The actor (I think) playing Ale says more with one facial expression than one can imagine. This reminded me what a true small movie can accomplish. It shows what kids are capable of, even without much support and love. Definitely recommend.
A Treasure!
posted on 31 Jul 2009Chop Shop is a hidden treasure out in theaters! I cannot begin to describe how wonderful the performances are in this movie. This film is for anyone who wants to watch a powerful story and see an example of what contemporary movies should look and be like.This film is about a young boy, Alejandro "Ale" who works and lives with his teenage sister, Isamar "Izzie" in a one-room tiny loft in an auto shop. The story takes place in a part of New York City (that I did not even know existed--Willits Points) where there are endless junkyards and body shops. Here, Bahrani tells the story of two forgotten children hoping to support themselves by buying and fixing up a food van.Ale makes money helping at the auto shop, and Izzie helps at a food van; both, however, earn extra money on the side. Ale sells bootleg movies and stolen car parts; Izzie results to selling herself. Their lives are surrounded by grit and grim, but even though both witness, live and barely survive within their harsh world, their love for each other is never tainted by the filth that surround them. And occasionally they are able to laugh and enjoy moments of their childhood that is being stolen by the reality of struggling to survive and stay together.The best comparison I have for Chop Shop is that Bahrani's juxtaposition of an innocent love between family members against such a bleak atmosphere is as powerful as Pasolini's Mama Roma combined with the struggles of growing up too fast in an adverse environment just as in Bresson's Mouchette.Having co-written, directed and edited both this film and his first, Man Push Cart (which won awards all over the world), Bahrani is a total package filmmaker.I can only hope that his films will not be hidden treasures for long!