Avis Metacritic

This is as exceptional as microbudget cinema gets.

Economic anxiety is rarely spoken about in the film, but the life-and-death importance of dollars and cents is felt in every frame.

The movie took a long time to get distribution, but there's no expiration date on filmmaking this strong.

Take Out is the season’s freshest, most sympathetic movie about making your way in modern-day Manhattan with a little help from your friends.

This day in the life of a young man attempting to earn cash for his family back home gathers impact by the reel.

Shih-Ching Tsou and Sean Baker’s gripping, no-budget tale of a day in the life of a young Chinese immigrant taking on extra restaurant delivery duties in order to pay off a debt manages to mix immersive, pseudo-documentary filmmaking with a suspenseful narrative.

In this early feature, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Shih-Ching Tsou, Sean Baker displays a soon-to-be-familiar instinct and affection for characters existing on the edges of society. If his eye for casting and sense of narrative drive isn’t finely honed yet, you can still sense a unique cinematic perspective being brought to bear on an overlooked milieu.

Take Out, beautifully shot and coming to a Criterion DVD, makes a gritty, intimate portrait of working life on the struggling end of the spectrum.

His endless string of demeaning apartment-doorway interactions with a convincing cross-section of hungry customers is darkly funny, even if it never snowballs into the “After Hours”-type obstacle course one might hope.

Take Out is a sweet-and-sour look at the immigrant experience.