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. Bahrani's outer borough is a Babel, not just of languages, but of aspirations and ethics.

The most hopeful character around has to be Alejandro (the precocious Alejandro Polanco). He sells candy on the G train, the only New York subway that never reaches Manhattan. That's a tipoff that what we have here is not going to be your standard rags-to-riches menu with a Horatio Alger twist.

Few seem to work harder than Alejandro, who when not harassing subway riders is hustling customers for the auto shop where he sleeps, according to the goodwill of the shop's owner, Rob (the nonprofessional but thoroughly convincing Rob Sowulski). Like the hero of Bahrani's much-lauded debut, "Man Push Cart," Alejandro can work all he wants: His labors are like so much smoke, wafting out of a trash-can fire, floating out over the East River, and dissolving back into dreams.

Everyone in the film is Alejandro's dramatic subordinate, but his interactions with those around him define who he is. Rob, for instance, gets irritated with Alejandro when he pays the boy and Alejandro stands there counting his money. "What're you counting it for?" Rob asks, insulted. The chop-shop operator, on the other hand (played by Ahmad Razvi) tells him, "Count your money." So we have Rob, the old-school American, vs. Ahmad, the new American, and the boy in the middle, trying to figure out how he'll get around both of them. He'll succeed, we imagine, without us wanting to imagine how.

Bahrani's precise way with detail and the captivating performance he gets out of young Polanco come via a talent able to transcend place, transform it and even elevate it. The director has created a not-to-miss gem for the discriminating viewer.

-- John Anderson (April 11, 2008)

Contains adult themes, profanity and violence.