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Man Push Cart (2006)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:40
Rotten:6
Average Rating:6.9/10
Consensus: This compassionate portrait of a New York City street vendor is as beautiful as it is melancholy.
Synopsis: It's 3:00 a.m. in Manhattan, the hour of rumbling garbage trucks, glaring headlights, and the bluish florescent glow of the all-night delis. Trudging alongside the honking traffic, Ahmad drags a... It's 3:00 a.m. in Manhattan, the hour of rumbling garbage trucks, glaring headlights, and the bluish florescent glow of the all-night delis. Trudging alongside the honking traffic, Ahmad drags a coffee and bagel cart to a busy midtown corner. Hours later, he is swiftly and efficiently selling steaming cups of "coffee regular" to rushing New Yorkers. In the afternoons, he battles traffic to return the cart to a warehouse, occasionally peddling bootleg DVDs for extra cash along the way. A solitary, quiet loner, Ahmad strikes up slightly awkward friendships with Noemi, a young Spanish woman who works at a newsstand, and wealthy, jovial Mohammad, who is shocked when he realizes Ahmad was a famous singer in Pakistan. Through Ahmad's relationships with both his new friends, and his estranged family, we come to understand that he is haunted by a tragedy in his past. A beautifully crafted character study that captures the textures of a very specific New York experience, Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart is a subtle, insightful portrait of a man struggling with issues of identity, self-worth, and the harsh realities of finding a place to belong in a vast, often-unfriendly American metropolis. -- © Sundance Film Festival [More]
Starring: Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ahmad Razvi, Ali Reza
Starring: Leticia Dolera, Charles Daniel Sandoval, Ahmad Razvi, Ali Reza
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Studio: Films Philos
Reviews for Man Push Cart
Although the acting isn't so hot from the non-professional bit part players, Ahmad Ravzi - also a non-professional actor and former push cart seller himself - puts in a stoic and solid performance.
Fiction, but always with one foot firmly planted in a grim post-9/11 reality, the cast and crew got called terrorists by people passing by the set, and with a visit from the FBI to see if the film set was a coverup to conceal a terrorist plot in progress.
The darkly realistic cinematography of Michael Simmonds gives the film a near-documentary style in its depiction of the endless, physically draining work.
Recalling Italian neorealist movies such as The Bicycle Thief, Man Push Cart is a slice of a very sad life.
A sad, powerful, austere experience of a movie, this is the story of a man who has known profound, compound loss.
A sad, honest movie about the day-to-day courage and stoicism of decent people who cling to the lowest rung of the social ladder.
Man Push Cart, written and directed by Ramin Bahrani, attempts to put a human face on the men (and it is generally men) who work inside these tin boxes.
A slow-burn stunner, where nothing much of consequence happens, except life itself.
The makers of Man Push Cart seem so dedicated to making a film that defies Hollywood conventions that the finished product lacks enough entertainment value to justify price of admission.
Man Push Cart is likely too slow to pull in much of an audience, but that's a shame, because it has so much empathy for the plight of the lonely.
Michael Simmond's cinematography, especially in scenes of Ahmad muscling his way amid evening traffic and early-morning delivery trucks, is wonderfully true to the moods of a city that never sleeps and seldom nods at the hard work going on before it.
Shot in three weeks, Man Push Cart does a fine job of capturing the bitter flavor of Ahmad's life.
Free of contrived melodrama and phony suspense, it ennobles the hard work by which its hero earns his daily bread.
Ahmad's concerns -- his sadness and his striving -- become universal. Though his early-morning riser's world is gray and threaded with melancholy, it becomes, in the end, a place we recognize.
Man Push Cart is a solemn mood piece that hovers somewhere between bittersweet and despairing.
Unfortunately, the characters are so tediously one dimensional, poorly scripted and amateurishly acted, that the most sympathetic character is a neglected kitten.
The performances and storyline are pretty perfunctory. But the nocturnal images of Razvi hauling his metallic cart through traffic that barely notices his existence eloquently encapsulate the émigré experience.
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