AllMovie

Take Out is a fine example of digital video's virtues. This fascinating, sharp-witted, and moving drama would probably never have been funded on a 35 mm budget, and its bare-bones black-and-white videography and fly-on-the-wall improvisatory feel exemplify DV's ability to capture all manner of everyday human interaction with intimacy and immediacy. Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, who co-wrote and co-directed Take Out, use a deceptively simple setup and a documentary style to fully immerse the audience in Ming Ding's (the excellent Charles Jang) world, and it's a way of life that few viewers have probably taken the time to contemplate. Anyone who doesn't work in a service job is more likely to identify (or try to resist identifying) with the deliveryman's varied Upper West Side customers. These interactions are important to the movie's viewpoint, but at its core is what goes on inside the little takeout restaurant. There, the closeness of the camera and the sharply etched performances (particularly the comically scene-stealing turns of Wang-Thye Lee and Jeng-Hua Yu) give the movie a vivacious clarity. In these scenes of people working and going about their daily lives, Take Out is vibrantly true-to-life in a way that few fictional movies manage. Baker and Tsou hedge their bets, cramming the movie's final third with a bit too much incident. A couple of plot twists strain credulity, but the filmmakers end things on just the right note. With antecedents dating back to Italian neorealism, Take Out still manages to feel wonderfully fresh. It's independent American filmmaking at its most vital.