Ming Ding makes deliveries. His main source of income is derived from the tips he receives from delivering broccoli chicken and other Chinese delicacies. Some people don’t tip, don’t care, and don’t know. You see, Ming has one day to make a payment (just one of many more to come) to his loan shark creditor who helped him travel to this country illegally. One day is all he has to make deliveries for the cash. One day might not be enough.

“Take Out” starts with a pretty routine story of loan sharks and a last ditch effort to pay one’s debt but manages to be amount more than that tired premise, it is really about friendship and cultural bonding told on the incremental level. Filmmakers Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou have taken a decidedly low tech approach to filmmaking by employing what appears to be a number of digital video cameras in a real Chinese restaurant and capturing the goings on there while at the same time focusing on Ming’s fabricated story. It works well, yielding a funny and sometimes touching film.

Many of the shots show the rigors of the take out delivery business. Ming, as part of his job, is expected to deliver food no matter what the conditions, rain especially. He rides a bicycle from delivery to delivery protected only by a thin raincoat. Ming looks miserable. Of course, the pain inside is far worse than the troubles he has doing his job. He longs to see his wife and child, and in one poignant scene he sits and stares at his family’s photograph and you know that he feels all alone and the sadness is written all over him.

Friendship is a major theme here. The restaurant co-workers have all been through Ming’s problems, perhaps, exactly the same way. This empathy is well handled in “Take Out,” especially, given the documentary filmmaking techniques employed. One full day is painstakingly captured complete with a full range of emotions from Ming’s co-workers. They know Ming’s difficulties even before he enters the restaurant that morning and it does not matter how much he tries to hide it, he can’t.

The friendship ties of the co-workers are strengthened by the fact that they all have had to deal with the loan sharks personally in the past. The American dream is so strong within them that they will leave their homes and families and travel half a world away trading one form of oppression for another. The debts they incur to get to the United States apparently take years to repay and the interest rates are outrageous. This situation appears to be pretty common in the Chinese community, and I wanted to know more about the arrangement and how this illegal trade works which may make for another good film.

Ming is played by Charles Jang who utters very few words of English. In one scene when confronted by adversity, he attempts to communicate in English but it is pretty much ineffective and the frustration is nerve-rackingly effective. Jang is very good as Ming, looking sorrowful most of the time but not over-playing that emotion. Given the amount of time he spent on a bike in the rain for this role, I’m sure that the sorrow was pretty real.

The filmmakers have tried to approach their subject from the Ken Loach school of filmmaking and their really hands-off style is refreshing--nothing seems forced. Although you know what is coming, you are not put off by it. In fact, even though the formula for the loan shark type sub-genre (I think that it exists) is followed, Ming’s unique plight involving his status in the United States and lack of English language skills makes the twists seem plausible and even brand new.

Once you see “Take Out,” you will likely tip the delivery man, and maybe even give him or her a little extra.

Jonathan W. Hickman, 2004