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Growing Up in the Dead-End Streets; 'Chop Shop' Urchin Steals Your Heart

The hook on Ramin Bahrani's feature "Chop Shop" is that the gifted young director has made a Third World movie in the shadow of Shea Stadium. It's no stage set: On the junk-scattered streets of Willets Point, Queens, is a society that could exist in Bangkok, Rio or Soweto. The film presents a world of food carts, garages selling "moflers," and people in castoff T-shirts advertising products they've probably never seen, much less bought. Nourishment is provided by peanut butter. English is spoken, but only by default. Bahrani's outer borough is a Babel, not just of languages, but of aspirations and ethics.

The most hopeful one around has to be Alejandro (the precocious Alejandro Polanco), ...

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