Few movies capture the horror of growing up on the streets like this one: no parents, no authority figures, and no protection whatsoever. Like the Brazilian movie City of God, Chop Shop lets you see what happens when a society utterly fails its youngest, and then exploits their naivety and innocence for profit.
The biggest difference for me is that Chop Shop feels exactly like the area of Queens that circles the big baseball stadium where all those juicy cars park, begging to be ripped off. This is my home turf. In between that con is a massive array of gypsy cabs illegally combing our city streets looking for fares, then clogging the nearby garages, seeking the cheapest deal to quickly replace a broken rear-view mirror.
Our hero is a “little man” in the ghetto sense of the words: because he has to be. He finds his sister (also out of foster care and in the shelter system), then tries to fold her into his now-legit world at the garage. He both works and sleeps there, and humble as it is, it's a toe-hold into the makings of a new life, as we watch him struggle to bring her into it.
I won't give away much more, but if you're a native New Yorker, you know people who grew up like this, or maybe you did, too. I know I started working as a kid, and it's still the mainstay of many cultural labor forces. Some parts are difficult to watch (who likes seeing children hurt or violated?!), but in the end, they remain a family: a small family of two, with a boy-child who is more of a man than many will grow up to be, and his troubled teen sister, and how they manage to stay together.
That's hope.
