TAKE OUT (2004)

Multi-Oscar’d for ANORA/’24, this micro-budget indie was effectively writer/director Sean Baker’s debut feature.  (An earlier film barely distributed.)  Baker, who also shoots his films, has Shih-Ching Tsou, now his regular producer, credited as co-writer/director* in this simple, story, strongly handled in quasi-documentary fashion (much of it caught on-the-fly in ‘stolen’ location work) following a thumpingly miserable day for illegal Chinese immigrant Ming Ding.  Up to his neck in loan shark debt, he’s woken by goons before heading to the storefront Chinatown joint where he’s the main bicycle delivery guy.  Borrowing just over half the payment he needs to raise from his few friends, he largely takes on all that night’s deliveries (thru a rain-soaked night) to reach his goal.  The bulk of the film consisting of interpersonal relationships in a tiny professional kitchen (seen-it-all manager, two taciturn cooks and a fellow delivery pal taking it easy to let Ming earn extra tips).  Their work a dance of speed & efficiency in a tight space.  But it's mostly dangerous bike runs thru slick/crowded streets before quick one-on-one interchanges with scores of customers.  Tiny Black-Out sketches where Ming (with little English) hopes for decent tips.  And it’s here that Baker really shows his evenhanded tactics as dramatist.  No matter how penny-pinching, curmudgeonly, or decent, each one treated as a real person, care and consideration given to all.  Even when there’s a mix-up between chicken or beef.  You’ve got to go back to the very early Jonathan Demme of CITIZEN’S BAND/’77 and MELVIN AND HOWARD/’80 to find its nonjudgmental like in American film.  Here, even with a touch of melodrama to set up the touching ending (a debatable choice BTW), Baker’s already giving benefit of the doubt to just about everyone on screen.  Shot in low-resolution digital that fits the material, he’s since learned how to add physical beauty, as appropriate, to the mix.*  But as fiimmaker, Baker was pretty much all there right from the start.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *For those who might find ANORA a bit too scorching, THE FLORIDA PROJECT may be the better Baker entry point.   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-florida-project-2017.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Apparently self-funded by Baker and Tsou, the film had what sounds like a fabulous twenty-to-one return on its budget.  Then again, when the total budget is about $3000 . . .