2009 John Cassavetes award nominee Take Out personifies low budget guerilla filmmaking at its best—an example of what current digital video makes possible. Shot on location from a real Manhattan take-out restaurant in Robert Drew's cinema direct style, we follow illegal Chinese immigrant Ming Ding (Charles Jang) as he makes it through his tension packed day. Owing a large sum of money to loan sharks demanding immediate payment for smuggling services, Ming borrows as much as he can from friends and relatives but must make up the final few hundred from his delivery tips.

Filmmakers Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou capture the essence of the harsh lifestyle, deftly cutting between the cooking routine of the tiny restaurant to the rain soaked streets of upper Manhattan during Ming's many deliveries. Ming says little and the film is primarily shot over his shoulder in front of numerous apartment doors, yet the film inserts the viewer into Ming's lifestyle and develops great sympathy for his plight, putting a somber and real human face on illegal immigrants. The mix of very few professional actors with numerous non-professionals gives the film a particularly gritty documentary feel.

We feel Ming's gratitude—though he can never bring himself to smile and say "Thank you" as coached by his co-worker friend Young (Jeng-Hua Yu)—when given a generous tip. And we feel his extreme disappointment when stiffed by a customer who coldly give no tip or only chump change; after all, his very existence depends on raising enough money to hold off the loan sharks. Simple and repetitious, the indie film continues to mesmerize with its relentless rhythm and structure. Despite a predictably melodramatic climax just when Ming appears to have succeeded (a la De Sica), the filmmakers still manage to salvage the story with a fitting coda.

But the primary strength of the films rests with the tremendous atmosphere that it creates, intimately connecting viewers with previously unseen reality of illegal immigrants who have risked everything to fight for a tiny piece of the American dream to share with their families back home. The honking sounds of NYC traffic as raindrops pelt Ming and his "I love NY" plastic delivery bags on his bike paint a gritty portrait of lives that go without headline coverage.

The most poignant moment of Take Out occurs near the end of the day as Ming anticipates achieving his goal; he quietly removes a folded photograph from his jacket. Although we later see exactly what he's looking at, we already know … and know what he's feeling from his eyes and subtle body movements—a powerful acting display from a young man who simply will never smile or say a whole lot.