83
Metascore
20 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertNow we have an American film with the raw power of “City of God” or “Pixote,” a film that does something unexpected, and inspired, and brave.
- 90SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirAnnounces the arrival of a director radically out of step with the dominant conventions of American moviemaking, one who blends a social-realist vision and a passion for cinematic poetry.
- 83The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThough Chop Shop is an American film, it feels more like an Iranian movie or the Dardenne Brothers’ "Rosetta"; Bahrani introduces something like a plot point in the late-going, but he mostly focuses, to riveting effect, on how his young hero hustles and claws through everyday life.
- 80The Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenThe Hollywood ReporterMichael RechtshaffenIranian-American filmmaker Ramin Bahrani has followed up his well-received Man Push Cart with another penetrating portrait of life on the outskirts of New York.
- 80New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinNew York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinBahrani’s concentration is close to supernatural as he tracks the young, prepubescent Ale (Alejandro Polanco) from job to soul-numbing job, some legal, some extralegal, to the point where you’re forced to suspend altogether your moral judgments and watch with a mixture of pain and awe.
- 80Village VoiceVillage VoiceAuthentic as all this feels (and smells, and tastes), Chop Shop gives off a heightened sense of reality, a faintly idealized atmosphere akin to the Lower East Side milieu of "Raising Victor Vargas," a close relative in the New York branch of neo-neorealism.
- 80The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottThere is nonetheless a lyricism at its heart, an unsentimental, soulful appreciation of the grace that resides in even the meanest struggle for survival.
- 75New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickBahrani's unsentimental film is perhaps most interesting as a look at a colorful, little-known world that has recently been targeted for urban renewal.
- 70VarietyTodd McCarthyVarietyTodd McCarthyUltimately, the pic will be noted and remembered not for any inherent drama or analysis but for its simply having so thoroughly documented a strange place most people have never seen and never knew existed.
- 67Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumAs he did in his striking 2005 first feature film, "Man Push Cart," about a Pakistani street vendor in New York, perceptive indie filmmaker Ramin Bahrani looks at what others overlook and finds drama in everyday details.