- Ramin Bahrani's Chop Shop is one of those rare films that immediately makes the audience question whether or not what they're watching is truly a work of fiction. The cast, consisting primarily of untrained actors, is so convincing, as is the film's location in a section of Queens littered with broken-down cars and scrap metal, that this could very well be a documentary. I sincerely hope that it is not, given the difficult lives that young Ale (Alejandro Polanco) and his older sister Izzy (Isamar Gonzales) still have ahead of them, but their situation is alarmingly plausible nonetheless.
- You see, Ale and Izzy are poor. More specifically, they are poor in a way that most of us can barely comprehend. Despite being far too young to legally hold a job, Ale works at an auto repair shop in a street that overflows with such businesses. His gruff boss (Rob Sowulski) pays him in cash for running errands and helping out, although we suspect that Ale makes far less than minimum wage. At night, Ale lives in one of the upstairs offices, where his dinners consist of microwave popcorn and soda. School is referred to abstractly, but we gather that the boy hasn't been in a classroom in years. With Ale's help, Izzy lands a job working in a local food truck and moves in with her young brother. She also has a night job that the audience probably guesses at long before Ale finds out about it.
- Despite these hardships, the film goes to great lengths to remind us that Ale and Izzy are both still kids. Sure, they work long hours at thankless jobs, but they laugh and have fun, too. When he isn't working, Ale tears around the pothole-ridden, rainwater-infused neighborhood behind Shea Stadium with his friend Carlos (Carlos Zapata), making mischief of a relatively innocent (if foul-mouthed) sort. Ale and Izzy tease each other in playful ways, too, just like a normal brother and sister should. The two of them even have a grand plan to save enough money to buy Izzy her own food truck. Adults might legitimately worry that the siblings don't know much about the business and how that kind of money is hard to come by, but Ale and Izzy think they're up for the challenge.
- The film, however, knows that the deck is stacked against them. Ale's desperation to help his sister out leads him to increasingly illegal sources of income, including purse snatching and stripping down presumably stolen cars with an opportunist named Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi). Furthermore, when Ale and Izzy eventually get their coveted food truck, it hardly proves to be a triumph over adversity. The result is a painfully realistic story that reminds me a lot of The 400 Blows except that Truffaut had already escaped poverty by the time he made his film. All Ale and Izzy have by the end of Chop Shop is a glimmer of hope, and frankly not much justification for that. All the audience can do is hope along with them and be thankful that their childhoods were easier than this.
- I guess the film got made just in time since they demolished Shea Stadium in 2008.
