The fact that neither [leads] were professional actors before starring here makes their extraordinarily fluid performances all the more impressive, and helps burnish Chop Shop’s golden aura of genuine discovery.

| Original Score: 75/100 | Jul 26, 2023

Chop Shop uses non-actors to continue this neorealism...

| Mar 6, 2023

Bahrani shoots the film in classic verite style, all hand-held cameras, and natural dialogue, capturing a docu-feel for a story as gritty and resourceful as its young protagonist.

| Jun 1, 2021

Its protagonist hopes to avoid leading a life of quiet desperation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 12, 2021

Ramin Bahrani's low-budget studies of people on the margins of American society.

| Feb 27, 2021

That's what's fantastic about Chop Shop, and even Man Push Cart, Bahrani doesn't look down. He captures the stories with sincerity, bestowing a kind of grace on his characters.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 23, 2021

In his Chop Shop, co-written with Bahareh Azimi, director Ramin Bahrani has chosen to treat a world and individuals that are invisible to the people who "count" in New York City.

| Feb 14, 2021

It never feels artificial or created, it feels raw, earthy and urgently immediate.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2019

Full Review | Jan 30, 2018

Chop Shop is the best American indie so far this year.

| Aug 22, 2017

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 18, 2011

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

As much a well-rounded character study as it is an expos on a certain segment of society on the fringes of American civilization.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Mar 3, 2010

A film brimming with humanity. Gritty, smart, attentive and truthful.

| Original Score: 89/100 | Jan 5, 2010

A film with an incredible sense of place, of space, of how they shape and guide and define us.

| Dec 9, 2009

Capturing grungy Queens blocks on the cusp of change as if it's the Third World, where entrepreneurial boys aggressively, and heartbreakingly, take on adult responsibilities.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 3, 2008

All these low-level criminal enterprises and idle dreams aren't happening in Mexico City or Kandahar; they're just outside Queens.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Oct 18, 2008

What Chop Shop does well, is take us into America's hidden Third World for a bit of culture shock.

| Original Score: B | Jul 21, 2008

It's a near-masterwork of low-budget precision and improvisation, constructed and rehearsed over many months in collaboration with the actors and the entire Willets Point community.

| Jul 9, 2008

It's a sharp mixture of neorealist grit and lyricism, and while other writer-directors would treat the sibling relationship at the film's center very differently--more melodramatically, for starters--Bahrani lets us into two improvised lives naturally.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 9, 2008