Film Review: 'Liberty Kid'

On February 01, 2008

Persuasive study of two young guys whose options narrow when, following the 9-11 attacks, they lose their service jobs at the Statue of Liberty

BY BOB STRAUSS >FILM CRITIC

If "Liberty Kid" is any indication, writer-director Ilya Chaiken doesn't just make movies; she lives through them from the inside out.

This film about two young, low-to-no-income Brooklyn guys trying to make the best of their no-win prospects recalls early Martin Scorsese and Nick Gomez.

Its observational detail is comprehensive, its sense of place and grimy New York street flavor thoroughly convincing.

Things move along at the loping, offbeat rhythm of life. You'd think you were watching a documentary if the actors weren't credited.

Obviously, they're pretty good. Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Savinon) are two buddies whose service jobs on Liberty Island get eliminated in the wake of the 9-11 attacks.

Though he means well and wants to further his education, Derrick has trouble finding decent, legitimate work.

He has a young child to support, woman-and-betrayal issues, and gets propositioned by Army recruiters with increasing regularity.

But he's as honest as the day is long compared to Tico, who keeps roping his friend into extra-legal and sometimes dire scams - and stealing Derrick's girls, to boot.

However toxic their relationship is, though, it's sometimes all that encourages either one of them to struggle on.

Tough as their lives are, Derrick and Tico manage to grab what good times they can, and there's enough humor in "Liberty Kid" to keep it this side of the total-downer line.

Chaiken not only understands her characters thoroughly but has strong, practical notions of how race, economics and politics affect them.

This is a smart little movie with intelligence and heart to spare.

ADDITIONAL SCREENINGS at
Pioneer Theater- 155 E. 3rd. ST. @ Ave. A, NYC

Wed. 1/16 @ 9pm
Thurs. 1/17 @ 9pm
Fri. 1/18 @ 7pm
Sat. 1/19 @ 5pm
Sun. 1/20 @ 5pm
Mon. 1/21 @ 7pm
Tues. 1/22 @ 9pm
Wed. 1/23 @ 7pm
Thurs. 1/24 @ 9pm
www.libertykidmovie.com
www.twoboots.com/pioneer


"N. Y. Times 'Critic's Pick'- There's not a single wrong note in
"Liberty Kid," Ilya Chaiken's poignant drama. Tender, wise and
deceptively low-key... everything about this film feels effortless."-
New York Times

"New York Magazine 'Critic's Pick'- Chaiken's subtle narrative touch,
along with the exceptionally strong performances of leads Al Thompson
and Kareem Saviñon, gives this one a rare emotional pull."- New York
Magazine

"Chaiken makes us feel for her characters... "Liberty Kid" is a
poignant look at what might be called 9/11's collateral damage".- NY
Post

"Liberty Kid elevates… by keeping a 'Wire'-worthy ear to the street
talk of south Williamsburg and maintaining a shrewd balance of the
personal and the political… an uncommonly acute, deftly played drama
of the New York working class"- Village Voice

"the least explicit yet most affecting film yet to depict New York in
the weeks and months after the towers fell."- New York Sun

"There may have been two or three dozen American films that struggled to make sense of 9/11 and its aftermath, but none of them have done more with less than "Liberty Kid"... It's a simple story, engagingly told, wonderfully
acted and shot with an eye for the beauty of the Big Apple's unglamorous outer-borough neighborhoods."- Salon.com

"Epic and resonant… to her eternal credit, Chaiken keeps her movie
grounded in her characters, allowing Thompson and Saviñon's
true-to-life performances to carry us through…"- Nerve

"A powerful drama… Chaiken works with a delicate touch… Potent,
thoroughly believable performances… Deeply poignant".- Hollywood
Reporter

"Smoothly kinetic… Glaringly real."- Variety

"Packs a visceral punch"- TV Guide Online

"Sensitively drawn… Strong performances".- LA Weekly

For tix & schedule:
twoboots.com/pioneer

http://www.tvguide.com/detail/movie.aspx?tvobjectid=292134&more=ucmoviereview


Brooklyn-based filmmaker Ilya Chaiken's follow-up to the sharply
observed MARGARITA HAPPY HOUR (2002) is a surprisingly expansive study
of two young Latino men who lose their low-level service after 9/11.
Tico (Kareem Savinon) and Derrick (Al Thompson) grew up together in
Brooklyn and, in their late teens, both dropped out of high school,
live at home and work at the concession stand on the Statue of Liberty
ferry. While Tico is content to drift through life, partying, fooling
around with girls and protecting his tough-guy reputation, Derrick is
studying to take the GED so he can go to college. He's also struggling
to help his overwhelmed mother (Rosa Ramos) and support his twin
3-year-olds, who live with an ex-girlfriend. When the first plane hits
the World Trade Center, their supervisor assures his staff that it's
just an accident; when the dust clears, the Statue of Liberty has been
closed to visitors and Derrick and Tico are out of work. Nine months
later, Derrick is still looking for a decent job and Tico is drifting
into small-time drug-dealing; Derrick reluctantly becomes his partner.

The film eventually covers several years in their lives, encompassing
small victories, bitter betrayals, family unheavals, imprisonment,
marriage and military service. Chaiken keeps the focus tightly on Tico
and Derrick throughout: 9/11 and the Iraq War impinge on the film to
the exact degree that they irrevocably change the young men's
day-to-day lives — it's not that Derrick and Tico are thoughtless,
only that they don't have the luxury of thinking too much about the
big picture when the small picture is always on the verge of
collapsing. Far from trivializing world-changing events like the
navel-gazing A BROKEN SOLE (2007), Chaiken's focus drives home the
fact that collateral damage comes in many forms and marginal lives are
easily derailed. And though she keeps the Iraq War entirely off
screen, Chaiken's single shot of the smoldering towers — which Derrick
watches through a coin-operated viewer — packs a visceral punch.
--Maitland McDonagh

http://www.nysun.com/article/69166

Life, Death, and Liberty
Movies | Review of: Liberty Kid

By S. JAMES SNYDER
January 9, 2008

We don't see the planes hit the towers in "Liberty Kid," but given that Derrick (Al Thompson) doesn't see the collisions either, the omission seems about right. Instead, the teenager is jolted from his morning nap as he rides the ferry to Liberty Island to start his workday.

As the bright September sun streams into the ferry's cabin, Derrick mourns the fact that his latest crush has stood him up for a coffee date. As Derrick closes his eyes, director Ilya Chaiken ("Margarita Happy Hour") cuts to the ferry's clouded windows, which obscure the Statue of Liberty in the distance. We can't quite make out the landmark, maybe because Derrick doesn't so much as give it a second glance — Lady Liberty serves less as a source of inspiration for the high school dropout than as a paycheck. Fading to black, Ms. Chaiken bathes the audience in a moment of sensory deprivation, and then a roaring jet engine breaks the silence.

For Derrick, childhood is over. It is here, only 15 minutes into "Liberty Kid," which begins a one-week engagement today at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, that this young man's daily routine of work, beers, flirting, and lazy afternoons with his best friend, Tico (Kareem Savinon), evaporates into the air. What is initially infuriating about "Liberty Kid" — the winner of last year's New York International Latino Film Festival — but gradually becomes invigorating, is the way Ms. Chaiken crafts a micro-story of a macroevent, and helps to put an exhausted subject into fresh relief.

For only an instant, we see the burning columns of the World Trade Center through the high-powered binoculars on Liberty Island, which Derrick pays a quarter to use, and for only a brief moment during Derrick and Tico's three-hour walk home that Tuesday morning do we see the posters of the missing taped to fences in downtown Manhattan. But outside of these two iconic references, "Liberty Kid" tells the story of an insulated Brooklyn community that is slowly but profoundly affected by an event that few of its inhabitants seem interested in talking about. What's most curious about this modest character study is that it may be the least explicit yet most affecting film yet to depict New York in the weeks and months after the towers fell.

Almost immediately after the collapse downtown, Liberty Island is shut down; days later, Derrick and Tico learn they have lost their jobs. As they look for new work in their neighborhood, one shop owner after another, clearly hurting for patrons, informs them they aren't hiring. When Tico tells Derrick one day that he's devised a new strategy for lining their wallets — dispensing drugs on the street corner — it is with a sense of desperation and isolation that Derrick, the boy who keeps describing himself to girls as a "visionary," agrees. In many ways, it's a powerless decision that parallels Derrick's later discussions with an Army recruiter waiting outside the GED testing center.

There are elements of soap opera at play here, notably in a spontaneous mugging that leaves Derrick bruised and bloodied, in the introduction of a girl who drives the best friends apart, and in a subplot involving Derrick's mother deciding to leave the city. But even here, it's refreshing to see commonplace dramas mixing with such profound horrors as September 11 and the world it created. Unlike so many stories that would fit squarely into the genre of September 11 films, "Liberty Kid" is a story about friendship and family that just happens to play out in the shadows of the city's darkest day. There's even room for a healthy dose of humor, as Derrick, Tico, and a few friends embark on a foolhardy mission to scam money from the city by staging a car accident at an unmarked intersection.

Messrs. Thompson and Savinon alternate between fearless and fragile, draping their characters with an aura of sensitive intensity. They talk big, but are in fact terrified about the sudden downturn of their neighborhood, and in search of a survival strategy. Really, it's Derrick's eroding personality, the slow chipping away of his idealism, that fuels the movie's haunting finale.

Fed up with the drugs, frustrated with his friends, and frantic over his evaporating prospects, Derrick joins the Army, and when he returns — wide-eyed and all but mute — it's clear that something we came to cherish in this sweet young man has vanished. When the Statue of Liberty reopens, Derrick and Tico return to their old jobs, but it's hardly a return to business as usual. Back out on the ferry, staring ahead at the statue, something about Derrick, about even Lady Liberty herself, is subtly but decisively different. So much has changed, so many compromises have been made, so many dreams have been shattered, so much blood has been spilled. Something is broken that can never be fixed.

http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/btm/2008/01/10/business/

"Liberty Kid" follows George W. Bush's war into the streets of Brooklyn

My ultimate underdog this week, though, is Ilya Chaiken's micro-budget feature "Liberty Kid," a terrifically engaging story about two friends on the mean streets of Brooklyn that does more, with fewer resources, to capture the spirit of post-9/11 New York than a dozen typical Hollywood morality fables. If Chaiken can get any kind of DVD deal for this movie, and the chance to make another one, I'm sure she'll be delighted.

There may have been two or three dozen American films that struggled to make sense of 9/11 and its aftermath, but none of them have done more with less than "Liberty Kid," the second feature from New York writer-director Ilya Chaiken (her first film, "Margarita Happy Hour," premiered at Sundance seven years ago). It's a simple story, engagingly told, wonderfully acted and shot with an eye for the beauty of the Big Apple's unglamorous outer-borough neighborhoods.

Odalis, aka Derrick (played by the tremendously likable Al Thompson), is a Dominican immigrant who sometimes passes for African-American, depending on prevailing conditions. Along with his best buddy Tico (Kareem Saviñon), Derrick loses his job slinging hot dogs at the Statue of Liberty after the 9/11 attacks, and the duo follow different paths through the crime-ridden streets of South Williamsburg.

Chaiken relies on a time-honored dramatic structure here, but I think that's the film's strength. Derrick is the reliable guy with dreams and aspirations, while Tico is the charming ladykiller with his eye on the here and now. One of them ends up in the military and the other in jail, but Chaiken is not trying to moralize, and the consequences and trajectories of both men's lives remain ambiguous. This terrific little indie may or may not propel its director and stars to bigger things, but it's yet another good, no-budget work from New York indie kingpin Larry Fessenden and his production company, Glass Eye Pix. Give that man a MacArthur fellowship? Or at least some damn money. (Now playing at the Pioneer Theater in New York.)

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01112008/entertainment/movies/liberty_kids_233767.htm

even though they get the title wrong...

LIBERTY KIDS
By V.A. MUSETTO


January 11, 2008 -- THERE is no shortage of films about the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but there is a lack of good ones. The low-budget indie "Liberty Kid," produced by downtown auteur Larry Fessenden, is one of those that succeeds.
Shot on the mean streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, it tracks two buddies, Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Savinon), who lose their jobs when the Liberty Island concession stand where they toil is shut down.

Derrick has twin kids and aspirations for a better future, but he finds himself drifting into shady dealings dreamed up by Tico. Derrick is finally talked into joining the Army by a recruiter who assures him there is "no way" the US will go to war in Iraq.

Director-writer Ilya Chaiken makes us feel for her characters, whose lives consist of one indignity after another, often at the hands of the NYPD. "Liberty Kid" is a poignant look at what might be called 9/11's collateral damage.

Running time: 92 minutes. Not rated (profanity, violence, drug use). At the Two Boots Pioneer, Third Street and Avenue A, East Village.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/movies/09libe.html


This movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The Times.
January 9, 2008
Two Drifting Life Rafts on a Sea of Circumstance

By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
There's not a single wrong note in "Liberty Kid," Ilya Chaiken's poignant drama about marginal lives strained to breaking by the aftermath of Sept. 11.

When the best friends Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Saviñon) lose their concession-stand jobs at the Statue of Liberty after the terrorist attacks, they drift into low-level drug dealing and petty insurance scams. But the Dominican-born Derrick has higher aspirations for a college future and regular support payments for his two young children, and when Army recruiters come calling — assuring him that a war with Iraq is "not gonna happen" — he makes a decision he will come to regret.

Tender, wise and deceptively low-key, "Liberty Kid" reaches beyond its vulnerable protagonists to enfold an entire class of circumstantial victims. Gently nudging her story in unexpected directions, Ms. Chaiken never allows her small budget to show: from Eliot Rockett's beautifully lighted photography to the ease with which the actors inhabit their roles, everything about this film feels effortless. Even a support-group scene featuring real Iraq war veterans, which could have appeared jarringly staged, rings with understated authenticity.

Focusing on the quotidian over the episodic, "Liberty Kid" quietly accumulates emotional power. Not until the graceful, perfectly judged conclusion do we realize how much we care.

LIBERTY KID

Opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Written and directed by Ilya Chaiken; director of photography, Eliot Rockett; edited by Dave Rock; music by Jeff Grace; production designer, Jesse Cain; produced by Larry Fessenden, Mike S. Ryan and Roger Kass; released by Glass Eye Pix. At the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, 155 East Third Street, at Avenue A, East Village. Running time: 1 hour 32 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Al Thompson (Derrick), Kareem Saviñon (Tico), Raquel Jordan (Denice), Rosa Ramos (Awilda), Anny Mariano (Sister), Johnny Rivera (Nelson) and Rayniel Rufino (Mike).

After the Fall
The 9/11 movie, sincerely
by Nathan Lee

January 8th, 2008 12:26 PM

Liberty Kid
Written and directed by Ilya Chaiken
Two Boots Pioneer, January 9 through 15

Liberty Kid elevates that woeful genre, the 9/11 movie, by keeping a 'Wire'-worthy ear to the street talk of south Williamsburg and maintaining a shrewd balance of the personal and the political for two full acts. It is, alas, a three-act narrative. No matter: Produced by indie stalwart Larry Fessenden, the sophomore feature from writer-director Ilya Chaiken stages an uncommonly acute, deftly played drama of the New York working class.

Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareen Saviñon) find themselves out of work on September 12 when their Liberty Island concession stand is shut down. Wage-slave indignity gives way to a grudging coke operation (and a hilarious batch of business cards offering "Party Favers"), followed by the inevitable rough-and- tumble rivalries, jealousies, seductions, and betrayals. The actors remain superb even as Chaiken triple-underlines every-thing in the bittersweet denouement. Kudos to Kid, nevertheless, for having something worth saying in the first place.

http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0802,lee,78796,20.html

A nice little blurb in the GEN ART PULSE Newsletter:

http://www.genartpulse.com/archives/2008/01/liberty_kid_ilya_chaiken.php

Nervepop. com-
by Bilge Ebiri

"You'd think that after all the United 93s and 25th Hours and the recent rash of Iraq and torture movies, filmgoers would be pretty jaded about 9/11 by now. But when the 9/11 attacks come, glimpsed through a pair of stationary tourist binoculars, in the first act of Ilya Chaiken's Liberty Kid, it's a genuine shock. At first, you worry Kid is simply leeching emotions from a real-life tragedy. But Chaiken's film goes somewhere else. What begins as a run-of-the-mill urban drama about two guys from Brooklyn turns into something more epic and resonant.

At first glance, Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Savinon) seem like your usual indie-movie down-and-outers. Holding down dead-end jobs at the Statue of Liberty during the day, hanging out with chicks and partying at night, they're a classic mismatch: Derrick wants to go to college and make something of himself, while Tico is content to just keep hanging and get by. Their lives are upended when the attacks force the Statue of Liberty to shut down, leaving them jobless. This takes the film into more dramatic territory — crime, sexual betrayal and, for one character, a stint in Iraq.

A lesser director would have played this story for cheap emotions. But to her eternal credit, Chaiken keeps her movie grounded in her characters, allowing Thompson and Savinon's true-to-life performances to carry us through what is, on paper, an elaborate plot. Along the way, the director also avoids reaching beyond her budget restrictions. Don't expect battle scenes or massive crowd scenes shot on the fly; Liberty Kid develops as a ground-level epic. We get involved in the easy banter of the streets — and before we know it, years have passed by and the world has changed." — Bilge Ebiri