Chop Shop

Takes places in the Willets Point car shops area, across the street from the new Mets baseball stadium, a trianlge bounded by 126th Street, Willets Point Boulevard and Northern Boulevard. The DVD jacket calls it the Iron Triangle, a term I am not familiar with. In fact, Laura and I walked walked down to see Citi Field yesterday, and walked back to Flushing along Roosevelt Avenue, from where one can see that Triangle and the new stadium.

The film is too bright to be gritty, but it has a kind of harshness to the life it depicts: a 12-year-old waif wise to the hustling it takes to survive on his own and his 15-or-so-year-old sister take up residence in an upstairs room in a car-body repair shop. Alejandro works in steering business into the shop, learning how to do body repairs, peddling DVDs, stealing hub caps from cars parked at Shea Stadium, helping chop up a stolen car, and whatever else he can think of to make money. His sister, Isamar, works at a food cart, hangs out, and makes extra money by performing fellatio on truckers late at night. Ale longs to have a full life with Isamar, saving up money so the two of them can run their own food truck. The acting is not entirely polished, an aspect that acts to the realism of the film. Grim, hopeful, shot with a lot of hand-held cameras to capture characters as they walk, it is a gem of a film.