Take Out

Takeout is a raw and unpolished look at life in the margins. Shot in a documentary-like style, the film immerses you in the world of a Chinese immigrant working as a delivery driver in New York City. The film's gritty realism makes you feel like you're right there with him, struggling to make ends meet.

The narrative is pretty sparse, with very little exposition or traditional storytelling. This could feel slow to some, but I found it to be refreshing in how it captures the monotony and pressure of daily life. It's bleak, but not in a depressing way-instead, it's just honest, showing how difficult life can be when you're living paycheck to paycheck, and the struggles seem endless.

The acting is understated but effective, fitting perfectly with the film's documentary approach. While Takeout might not be for everyone due to its quiet pace and minimal plot, if you appreciate character-driven stories and a more grounded, real-world style, this is definitely worth a watch.

Perhaps if the Producers had paid strict adherence to their very own Rules and Parameters, more likely than not, this foreign film, TAKE OUT, would never have been produced and distributed!

First, let us focus on the The Title's content and context:

There must be at least a handful of You asking Yourselves.... And Exactly why was the Title TAKE OUT selected for this film? Well, let me offer my help. The answer to that question is relatively simple and straightforward!

The movie clearly presents ONE workday in the life of its central protagonist.... A Chinese TAKE OUT Delivery Boy!

You will find his day most enjoyable... Here, I am trying my very best to exlain exactly why!

Well...for STARTERS!..... this ONE really has Cinema Verite written ALL over it! You never know exactly what to expect next. But, for the most part, ironically, nothing DOES ever REALLY happen...and that, in the case of TAKE OUT, is a GOOD thing, believe me!

Perhaps a bit cryptic and difficult to decipher at times, but I think that is because, culturally speaking, many Chinese Nationals seem to be a bit difficult to read!

Surprisingly, in the Special Features "Making-of" short, we learn that most of the cast are simply PORTRAYING characters from the Mainland. Of course, SOME of them really are, but most are Korean-American, Taiwanese, Malaysian, Chinese-American and Singaporean, ALL of whom speak PERFCT Mandarin. Wow! Sure fooled me!

A more accurate title might have been: "Chinese TAKE OUT Delivery Boy: A Day In The LIFE...or E-C Comah, E-C Goah!" If this zero budget film hadn't been executed with such overwhelmingly brutal and convincing precision, it most certainly would have been rated as much as 1 full*** less! From early on, my empathy with those on-screen characters was total and unwavering! They had me at "Sut-Tzun Tee-En-Hwah!"

At one point I actually said out loud to myself.... "Hey, they just followed this delivery boy around all day with a camera, that's why ALL this seems so REAL, because it IS REAL!" I consider myself a peace-loving person, but my identification with the characters in the film became so strong, that during one scene of horrible injustice, I yearned for a gun to shoot the bad guys myself!

TAKE OUT does shine a spotlight on some important realities. It shows us how new arrivals are forced into a life of virtual slavery by bottom-feeders who trap them into a never-ending cycle of loans with astronomical interest-rates! Hey, you think YOU have problems!? Closing note: Considering the microscopic 3K budget, the production values aren't all that bad.

Talk about getting a LOT of BANG for your BUCK!!!

Your best bet...Let TAKE OUT serve you up a slice of Chinese-immigrant life! You will feel quite satisfied!

8*.....ENJOY/DISFRUTELA!

I really liked Sean Baker's style of filming in this movie. It feels like a documentary with all the handheld cinematography. It's got a real raw gritty unfiltered feel to it. Ding Ming's living situation looks rough and unhealthy. I feel for people that have to live this way. His problem with paying off the debt seems to be an even worse situation. It's pretty harsh, but Sean is able to bring a warm humanity to the story which helps to lighten the feel and bring a glimmer of hope. It puts into perspective and sheds some light on the hard work and struggle immigrants have to go through just to make a living in a new country. This movie helps to empathize with that experience, especially if you've never been through it. Ming definitely put in that work, he grinded it out. Although what happens to him towards the end could be predicted from miles away, it still shows how there's hope in life when you're surrounded by good people.

It's amazing to think that this movie was made for just $3000, that's inspiring as hell. Really good directing from Sean Baker. I loved the candid New Yorker interactions. It's probably the best part about this movie. Some are really funny and lighten up the mood of the movie. Overall, it was a good movie with some stand out moments and a gritty raw style. The journey was entertaining and eye-opening. I'd watch this movie again just for the interactions and to be humbled by the experience and reminded that some people have it way worse. Raw score: 7.4/10.

A day in the life of an undocumented Chinese immigrant (Charles Jang) delivering food on his bike in Manhattan, which is as deeply realistic as it is compassionate. It starts with him being startled out of bed in the apartment he shares with many others by a couple of heavies who come collecting for a loan shark, and he then tries for the rest of the day to scrabble up the $800 he owes them. He has a wife and baby son back in China that he's hoping to bring over someday (and he's never even met his son), but as a part of getting smuggled into the country, owes people money at a high rate of interest, something that will take several years to pay off.

Most of the film is either in the kitchen of the small Chinese restaurant he works at or in the deliveries the man makes on a dreadfully rainy day, all of which felt incredibly authentic. The backstory to this film is amazing, shot as it was for less than $3,000, and in how it used real people in the customer interactions, some of which were loosely scripted on the fly, others of which seemed simply captured. As Sean Baker explained it, the take-out customers were cast by posting an ad on Craig's list offering $5 to those willing to be filmed at their own apartment receiving food, the resulting footage "hybrid filmmaking, blurring that line between what is real and what is fiction." I was blown away by how immersive it was.

Because a lot of the action is in deliveries, the tension in the film is quiet, but it's definitely there, and I was fully invested. Any setback for this guy can have severe consequences, like a flat tire, an ugly customer interaction, his bike getting stolen, or a car in all that traffic hitting him - and then of course there's the matter of needing to have $800 by the end of the day lest he get beaten some more. How will he make it through a day, much less years of working this way?

In this character there is the timeless struggle of an immigrant hoping for a better life, but Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou were wisely restrained in not making any big political statements or creating cliché interactions. A lot of what gets said is through the immigrant's mannerisms, and in us seeing the world through his eyes, with people from all walks of life and with varying levels of empathy taking food from him. I loved that about the film, and how it showed the power in the community, with people looking out for one another because they had been there, and knew what it was like. I saw great characters and performances in his co-workers, including his fellow delivery man and friend (Jeng-Hua Yu), "big sister," the cashier and manager (Wang-Thye Lee, who was essentially in her real job), and the prickly cook (Justin Wan). It's just a great little film, a hidden gem, and one to check out.

This film has no frills, but it doesn't need any. It's redolent of the authentic gritty milieu of a Chinese illegal who's got to get together $800 before the night's over to pay loan sharks by borrowing and delivering for a Chinese take out shop perched on the cusp between Harlem's projects and gentrified buildings all on a June day of pouring down rain. There's no time to breathe. The people are real. The external customers who come into the shop (some of them jokesters) are aspiring actors, but the apartment dwellers are opening their own doors. The lady taking the orders who they call Big Sister (Lee Wang-Thye) is the actual employee of the working restaurant that's in function in the location implied as the film is being shot. The rain is real. The anxiety feels real. What more do you need? Ming Ding (Charles Jang) is a pimply young father with a child he's never seen. He gets waked up early in the dormitory he sleeps in to get threatened and smashed with a hammer. The two men working for the loan shark take $800 he has saved and demand another $800 at the end of the day.

At work, Ming Ding is shyly noncommittal but his co-delivery guy Young (Jeng-Hua Yu), who was where he was four years earlier, worms out of him that he's in debt and lets Ming Ding take both their deliveries that day to raise his take. The essence of this film is that given the threatening situation, the viewer identifies all the more with the protagonist precisely because of his blankness and ineloquence. It is an aspect of his helplessness. And when Ming Ding makes his many deliveries he does not speak, even to smile and say "Thank you very much" as Young comically teaches him to do so he might get a better tip. He speaks no English, and this is a further dimension of his helplessness. The viewer too is helpless. We can't really see the money being exchanged clearly enough at the deliveries to know when Ming Ding is getting a tip and when he isn't. What we know is that the patrons are rarely pleasant and always hasty. For them, above all Ming Ding is a non-person.

Some who've commented on this feisty little film insist the plot "hook" is a formality and the aim is to depict the illegal-immigrant life or the low-level Chinese restaurant of New York City. That ignores that the detail is monotonous and repetitious; its effectiveness comes from suspense over whether Ming Ding will put together enough money. The uncertainty is the most essential aspect of the atmosphere and the most realistic.

In fact contemporary verismo or not, this is very much like the turn-of-the-century short stories of O.Henry, which often refer to the lives of the dirt-poor new immigrants of New York of an earlier era. Like many O. Henry characters, Ming Ding lives on the edge of life and death, poverty and exhaustion, and the story hinges on a last minute twist, a couple of them; the luck of the draw, a stupid mistake, a sudden access of kindness from an unexpected quarter. Of such things lives on the edge are made. Yes, we see the first twist coming, and the second one too is well set up, but that's how life-or-death short stories have to work. In this kind of story, whether by O. Henry or Baker and Tsou, the almost too tight construction of the narrative and the desperate exigencies of the protagonist's situations are friends to each other, and Baker and Tsou, who met at the New School, have made a little marvel of economy. Their scenario was dictated by the newcomers they encountered and Tsou, a Chinese speaker, spoke to everybody and even where the undocumented ones were concerned about anonymity, they weren't tight-lipped like Ming Ding. Tsou would like this film to be seen in China to show people the life of immigrants in America is much harder than they may think.

Seen at Quad Cinema June 13, 2008, where Baker and Tsou were present for a Q&A afterward. They are excited that five years after making the film, they are getting the audience contact of theatrical distribution.