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.)