Chop Shop

This film chronicles the lives of a poor brother and sister in the chop shop district of New York City. Aside from some characters going to the baseball stadium and the viewer hearing the fans chant "Mets" over and over, I'm not sure there's anything that would lead you to believe it doesn't take place in a third world country. Well, maybe the license plates, but I wasn't paying attention to those. I like that eye-opening quality of "Chop Shop," observing how the other half lives.

But the main characters are children, and unless we're talking about an Iranian film like "Children of Heaven" or "The Color of Paradise," that's usually not good enough to carry the film. Here, the actors aren't the best, they don't come across as very sympathetic, and they certainly don't carry the film.