Main Cast: Charles Jang, Jeng-Hua Yu, Wang-Thye Lee, Justin Wan
Release Year: 2004
Country: US
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou make their feature debut as writer/directors with the documentary-style DV drama Take Out. Korean-American actor Charles Jang stars as Ming Ding, a Chinese illegal immigrant struggling to make ends meet working as a deliveryman at a take-out restaurant. His day begins when he is rousted, beaten, and threatened with more violence by two men over an 800-dollar debt, which he incurred because he felt obligated to send some money back to his wife and child in China. Ming scrapes together what he can. His co-worker, Young (Jeng-Hua Yu), lends him some money, and offers to forgo his deliveries for the day so Ming can make more cash. The film follows the stoic Ming, who speaks little English, over the course of the day as he interacts with the cooks and restaurant manager (Wang-Thye Lee, an actual employee of the restaurant where Take Out was filmed), and races in the rain on a multitude of deliveries on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, interacting with a broad spectrum of New Yorkers. The filmmakers made Take Out on an extremely low budget, even by indie standards, using the Internet to find their cast, and shooting at the restaurant during business hours with a skeleton crew. Take Out was shown at the 2004 New York Asian American Film Festival and at the 2004 Nashville Film Festival, where it won the Grand Jury Prize. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Review
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. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Cast
Charles Jang - Ming Ding
Jeng-Hua Yu
Wang-Thye Lee
Justin Wan
Credit
Sean Baker - Director, Shih-Ching Tsou - Director, Sean Baker - Editor, Shih-Ching Tsou - Editor, Michael Sergio - Executive Producer, Isil Bagdadi - Executive Producer, Eva Huang - Makeup, Sean Baker - Cinematographer, Sean Baker - Producer, Shih-Ching Tsou - Producer, Sean Baker - Sound/Sound Designer, Shih-Ching Tsou - Sound/Sound Designer, Sean Baker - Screenwriter, Shih-Ching Tsou - Screenwriter, Badan Wong - Production Coordinator
Take Out is a 2004 independent film depicting a day-in-the-life of an illegal Chinese immigrant working as a deliveryman for a Chinese take-out shop in New York City. The widely acclaimed film, co-written and directed by Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou, has been nominated for the John Cassavetes award in the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards.
Take Out was filmed in and near upper-Manhattan, New York, in the spring of 2003. It debuted at the Slamdance Film Festival in January 2004. In June 2008 it was given a limited release through CAVU Pictures. On September 1, 2009, Kino Entertainment released 'Take Out' in the US on a Region 1 DVD.
Take Out is a day-in-the-life of Ming Ding (Charles Jang), an illegal Chinese immigrant working as a deliveryman for a Chinese take-out shop in New York City. Ming is behind with payments on his huge debt to the smugglers who brought him to the United States. The collectors have given him until the end of the day to deliver the money that is due. After borrowing most of the money from friends and relatives, Ming realizes that the remainder must come from the day's delivery tips. In order to do so, he must make more than double his average daily income.
In a social-realist style, the camera follows Ming on his deliveries throughout the upper Manhattan neighborhood where social and economic extremes exist side by side. Intercutting between Ming's deliveries and the daily routine of the restaurant, Take Out presents a harshly real look at the daily lives of illegal Chinese immigrants in New York City.
The main protagonist. A determined, reticent delivery man who is racing against time to come up with the late payment owed to Snakehead smugglers. Ming came to the United States with the goal of creating a better future for his wife and child back in China.
A fellow delivery man and Ming's closest friend at the take-out. Young is a happy-go-lucky slacker who provides comic relief to the mundane work day. He is the only one at the take-out who is aware of Ming's dilemma.
The cashier and managerial figure of the take-out. Big Sister is a spunky woman with street smarts who juggles the orders and operations of the take-out.
A cook at the take-out who has been in the country longer than most of the others. Wei's sense of seniority frequently lands him in minor disagreements of opinion and power with the other workers.
Production notes
Shooting inside the take-out
Take Out is a feature film shot on digital video due to both the cinema vérité style and the non-existent budget. Employing an ensemble cast of both professional and nonprofessional actors, and shooting without a full crew in an actual take-out restaurant during operating hours, gave filmmakers Tsou and Baker a liberating experience in which acting and story became the only concern. The "run and gun" method of filmmaking created a raw energy that the filmmakers feel they have captured on film.
Taking cues from the filmmaking of Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers, Take Out puts a distinctly human face on the lives of people largely hidden from and ignored by the main stream.
Interesting facts
The restaurant scenes were shot during the regular business hours of an actual Chinese take-out located in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
June 2003 was the rainiest June in New York City since record-keeping began in 1869.[1]. This timely weather provided the pounding rain seen in the bicycle delivery scenes.
The actors playing customers in the delivery scenes were found through Craigslist postings and paid $5 for their time and use of their doorstep.
Although the movie followed a general script, several scenes were improvised or created from candid footage.
Wang-Thye Lee, who plays Big Sister, is the only non-professional actor of the main cast and had been working at the actual take-out restaurant for over 10 years.
The lead actor, Charles Jang, is a Korean-American who learned to speak Mandarin Chinese while living overseas in Taiwan.
