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Man Push Cart (2006)
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Reviews Counted:15
Fresh:14
Rotten:1
Average Rating:7.5/10
Consensus: This compassionate portrait of a New York City street vendor is as beautiful as it is melancholy.
Theatrical Release:Sep 8, 2006 Limited
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
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Reviews for Man Push Cart
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.
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.
It's by no means an exaggeration to describe this quietly powerful film as Bressonian.
... a fascinating, sad, sometimes quite poetic window into a grueling way of life most of us know little about.
The writer-director, Ramin Bahrani, is a natural-born filmmaker who captures how the banal physical details of manning a pushcart could come to define a life.
Synthesizes aspiration, resignation, anonymity, celebrity, opportunity and denial into a portrait of something far beyond the immigrant experience.
Ahmad (Ahmad Razvi), the Pakistani immigrant who is the protagonist of Ramin Bahrani's Man Push Cart, goes through a Sisyphean daily grind.
Ramin Bahrani’s striking debut tracks a Pakistani street-cart vendor with a mysterious past as he pushes his steel box through Manhattan.
As a rhythmic cry for understanding, Man Push Cart has the simplicity of an Islamic hamd call to prayer.
Bahrani and his DP Michael Simmonds illuminate the murky beauty -- and hardscrabble economics -- of New York's all-night shadowland.
An example of spare, slice-of-life indie cinema at its most unpretentious.
Latest News for Man Push Cart
October 27, 2007:
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November 28, 2006:
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