Chop Shop DVD Review

Chop Shop tells the story of a young, tough talking pre-teen Latino boy named Alejandro (Ale) played by first time actor Alejandro Polanco, and his sister Isamar played by fellow first time actor Isamar Gonzales.

Alejandro is a street orphan who would rather grind it out on the tough streets than risk being separated from his sister by going to an orphanage. Ale tries to make money any way he can, be it selling candy to riders on the subway or stealing hubcaps from cars at the Mets game. Ale manages to procure a real job at a local garage where he can get paid and gets a room to stay in for him and his sister. He also manages to get a job for his sister working as a short order chef on a lunch truck. Despite the regular work, Ale continues to look for money anywhere he can, including spending a night chopping a stolen Volvo and snatching purses. Every penny he makes goes toward his plan to buy his own lunch truck for him and his sister to run. He needs $4,500 to buy the truck and to begin fixing it up.

Despite his efforts and hard work, he cannot seem to get his sister to commit or give up the wayward lifestyle that she had been living. She does not want to work and is unhappy at what Ale has managed to set up for them, despite being three years her junior. Soon Ale begins to think that Isamar may be working as a prostitute in the evenings.

Chop Shop is filmed in a style called cinema verite. This style combines a documentary look and feel with a more traditional film style of cuts and camera angles. The problem is, particularly with regard to Chop Shop, is that the film takes on a sort of fake documentary feel and loses its sincerity. As a result the film suddenly feels like an unfunny mocumentary a la Christopher Guest. Chop Shop is clearly scripted and the shots too perfect to be real, in a documentary whose goal is to capture an event, Chop Shop and traditional narrative filmmaking set up shots and camera angles to best tell the story.

Despite everything, Chop Shop tells an interesting tale of the kids that society has forgotten. The kids who have slipped through the cracks, taking up residence in the seedy underbelly of our culture, homeless and parentless with a lax moral compass, a compass that is easily thrown asunder in the quest of the ever present need for survival. Rahmin Bahrani does an excellent job telling this tale of hardship and survival of homeless youths. Chop Shop is like an American version of the hugely famous, similarly themed, Brazilian film, City of God.

Chop Shop is presented in widescreen and features a 5.1 stereo surround soundtrack. The DVD release special features include an audio commentary with director Rahmin Bahrani, cast and crew. The special features also include rehearsal footage and the original theatrical trailer.