Chop Shop

Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani creates a world alive with the textures of the outer boroughs in his second feature film, Chop Shop. The young protagonist, an enterprising street orphan named Ale (Alejandro Polanco), lives and works in a shady auto repair shop in Willets Point, Queens in order to secure a future for himself and his older sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales), a lithe young woman prone to secretive relationships and nocturnal assignations. Ale knows how to hustle. He steals hubcaps, hawks bootleg DVDs, and works long hours at the auto shop, all the while squirreling money away in a rusty tin to save up for a catering van that will keep his sister close to him and be their ticket out of abject poverty.
Though he inhabits a child’s body, he clearly lives in a man’s world. Ale’s quest for material and emotional transcendence is rendered with an emotional acuity that is never saccharine. He lives in the shadows of the furthest reaches of New York society without the anchors of family, school, or creature comforts, and though forced by necessity to labor like a man, he reaps none of the benefits of inclusion in the adult world. Polanco channels this anxiety into a taut, energized performance that mingles the carefree joie de vivre of youth with the grim determination of a pre-teen faced with adult responsibilities too young. The rush of the hustle, chaos of the streets, and hurt Ale feels from being cast to the periphery of the grown-up world is viscerally articulated throughout the film. Despite this strong undercurrent of sadness, a feeling of hopefulness prevails.
Keeping with the tradition of contemporary Iranian realist cinema, Chop Shop explores the textures of place and the redemptive bonds of family. Willets Point’s swirl of pigeon keepers, mechanics, lunch trucks, and elevated trains is a playground as much as a prison for Ale and Isamar. Bahrani never pities his characters; instead he imbues them with soulful humanity and presents them as willful dreamers rather than victims of their circumstance. Even in the depths of disappointment they can depend on each other to pull through.