THEATER
• King of Shadows
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Oh What War
• Three Changes
• 4 Adults Only
FILM
• The New York International Independent Film and Video Festival
• Virtual JFK: Vietnam if Kennedy Had Lived
Q&A
• 'Grey' Area
A health expert turned filmmaker makes his East Coast premiere
CULTURE VULTURE
• Culture Vulture

Man Push Cart
Directed by Ramin Bahrani

Review by Ethan Alter

Ramin Bahrani's debut feature "Man Push Cart" is set in a New York that most Gothamites see every day but rarely pay attention to. It's a New York populated by bodega stockboys, newsstand workers and guys hawking one-dollar cups of coffee from gleaming silver pushcarts. One of these vendors is Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), who emigrated from Pakistan several years ago with his wife and young son. A fledgling pop star back home, Ahmad started operating a cart – and selling porn DVDs on the side – to pay the bills and has yet to find a more lucrative career. At some point in the recent past (the movie never specifies how long he's been slinging coffee) his wife passed away, and his angry in-laws have claimed Ahmad's child. In his closet-like room somewhere at the Brooklyn end of the 2 train, Ahmad stashes his daily earnings in a small cardboard box, hoping that he'll soon have enough to pay for an apartment large enough to house his son.

The cartman cometh: Ahmad Razvi slings coffee on the streets of Manhattan in Ramin Bahrani's debut feature "Man Push Cart."

The film's street level depiction of the Big Apple is a welcomed contrast to the "Sex and the City" version of New York that's seen mainly as a playground for well-off yuppies. Instead, Bahrani deliberately harkens back to movies like Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and Walter Hill's "The Warriors." Like those films, "Man Push Cart" takes place largely at night and rarely ventures indoors. In another nod to Scorsese, Bahrani avoids the gritty verite style one normally associates with this kind of urban story. His shots are carefully composed, with the camera almost always locked down. The one nod he does make to verite is his use of non-actors. His star, for example, really did operate a pushcart for many years before going on to found his own non-profit group.

In its direction, "Man Push Cart" is often striking, but Bahrani never quite figures out how to drag this small character study out to feature length. Its most interesting storyline – Ahmad's increasingly estranged relationship with his son – is also the one Bahrani pays the least attention to, instead devoting too much time to a banal love story that finds our hero mooning over the cute Spanish girl who runs a nearby newsstand. Still, "Man Push Cart" is a potent reminder that everyone in this city has a story – even the guy serving you your morning coffee.