Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The original title of this review called it an "existential parable" but that would really be too much like putting the spoiler in the subject line. I don't mean that this seems to have an existential viewpoint. I mean that the writer/director, Ramin Bahrani, gave an interview in which he said that he was inspired by how the cart vendors of New York reminded him of the myth of Sisyphus. So there are no mysteries here. We see it too, as we see Ahmad Razvi push this huge heavy coffee- and-bagel cart the size of a minivan up and down the streets before down. The cart seems larger and heavier and more impossible to manage each time we see it. The sign on the cart always says the same thing: "Have a Nice Day." This sign is meant to be read by the customers, I suppose, not by the vendor.Ahmad Razvi is the actor, but the character is also named Ahmad, and in fact Razvi was not an actor, he was a guy Bahrani met who until recently had been pushing these carts around himself. Ahmad (the character) had a life in Pakistan as a singer. He no longer has it. In New York he had a wife and son. We see one happy moment in flashback. Now his wife is dead, and his son is living with his in- laws; his mother-in-law hates him and blames him for everything. He meets a successful Pakistani guy who might be helpful to him, and a young woman from Spain running a news shack who kind of likes him, it seems. But it's not wise to get too attached to anything in the world of Sisyphus. Not even the stone, er, cart.Well, now you sort of know the plot, if that's the term. And, putting it down like this, it might seem rather poignant, not to say depressing. And I can't say this movie is for everyone at any time. Honestly, more than once I was really hoping to see some little providential cliché that would solve Ahmad's problems, but the film never took that kind of easy pity on us.But on the other hand if your heart is open to it you come away from it with a feeling of having been washed free of attachment by a drenching rain. What, you want a movie with triumphs in it? There are no triumphs. We all lose everything ultimately. We don't take anything with us. The boulder always rolls back down over us sooner or later.So what choice do we have, except how we are going to conduct ourselves? After everything has happened to you that can happen, suppose that a guy comes up to you and asks for a coffee and a bagel. Will you give him good service? Will you smile at him from your heart? Will you wish him a nice day? Without irony, without envy? I think this is the question the film asks us. If you can do that, isn't that a triumph? Mightn't this actually be inspiring? Isn't this the way we can actually spit in Sightblinder's eye on the last day (to borrow from Robert Jordan)? That's what I thought, anyway.

I was excited to see this film after reading a little about it on my Netflix suggestion list. As a native New Yorker who knows the perfection of a cart cup of coffee and bagel every morning, I was really ready to dive in ...And I tried, I promise ... I tried.Yea, it is great to see NY if you're not from the City. Sure it is great to see a real humble working man (all the cart workers here are amazingly hardworking -- and many, the ones who have the regulars, are well-loved and appreciated for being right where you'd expect them and when) -- but ... boy did I need a plot, some dialog, a better look into some back story, ugh, anything -something - in the end, all I was left with was a craving for my morning bagel and coffee.Finally ... a young attractive single woman in a news stand, alone, in Midtown ... come on, man ... not likely.

It's an interesting thing to watch a director's early-career chronology out of order. I saw Chop Shop, a film Ramin Bahrani made a couple of years ago about orphans living in a wasteland of mechanics and car repairs, and loved its realistic look and feel and its touching story told through non-professional actors playing characters in risky and dire circumstances. His previous film- his debut- Man Push Cart, also has a realistic viewpoint, a sense of artistry with its cinematography but not so much as to lose the no-melodrama sense of its character in the world and what (little) happens with/to him. I was perhaps expecting a similar grim intensity, when it's really more observant, less about giving its character Ahmad drama to face when he really has enough behind him that he just has to push that cart. Sometimes doing the daily grind is enough to wear one's spirits down to a nub. Maybe that's what it's 'about'.It's the simple saga of Ahmad, a Pakistani working at a food cart who we see continually, every early morning, push it around in order to sell food (bagels, coffee), and make friendships with another man, Mohammad, who recognizes Ahmad from his previous life in his native country as a singer, and Noemi, a Spanish girl who works at the newsstand. What makes Man Push Cart fascinating- if also quite depressing- is that it's protagonist is just a decent guy who has been dealt with some bad luck in his life (bad meaning loss of his early career, unable to see his son, and a dead wife), and a quiet reluctance to enter back into what he did before when asked by his new friend Mohammad who, as he says, "has connections". There's under-the-surface pain that the actor Ahmad Razvi conveys without having to force it. But we know there is pain, and heartbreak, and a desire to just make his meager living and go along with it.So what happens in the film? Not much, really, which may frustrate some viewers even when it is shot tastefully on the dark streets and under-lit bars and acted with some talent. Well, there is a sort of story in Ahmad bringing a little happiness in his life with a stray kitten, which is something joyous and saddening. There is also the not-quite relationship between him and Noemi, where they simply enjoy each others company without saying to each other too soon why they aren't closer (then again, Ahmad mentions part of his backstory, and Noemi knows right away). But a lot of the film is just about the nature of observing a life being lived, one not extraordinary but not too boring. It's not quite at the level of a 'neorealist' effort like Chop Shop, and yet I wouldn't put it past anyone making the comparison. Sometimes we watch movies to escape in fantasy lives and archetypes. Other times, if necessary, we can watch in curiosity and sad awe at an existence like Ahmad's. It's a touching little film.

I believe much of the plot is an interpretation of the short story "The Overcoat" by the Russian author Nikolai Gogol. It took me a few days of reflection to figure out why the story was familiar to me.It's appropriate that 'Man Push Cart' is complimented by other reviewers as a realist film, given that Gogol is often called the "father of modern Russian realism" (from Wiki) I describe this post as containing a spoiler since anyone familiar with "The Overcoat" will have a pretty good idea of how the movie will turn out.As an aside, Gogol also wrote "Taras Bulba," which was made into a movie starring Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis.