NY POST - V.A. MUSETTO - 1/11/08

"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."

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TV GUIDE - Maitland McDonagh - 1/10/08

"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."

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SALON - Andrew O’Hehir - 1/09/08

"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.)"

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NEW YORK TIMES - Jeannette Catsoulis - 1/09/08

"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. "

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NEW YORK SUN - S. James Snyder- 1/09/08

"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."

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VILLAGE VOICE - Nathan Lee - 1/08/08

"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."

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NEW YORK MAGAZINE - 1/06/08

Critic's Pick
"Ilya Chaiken's gritty urban drama about two young Brooklyn men who lose their jobs at the Statue of Liberty in the wake of 9/11 and find themselves drawn into a world of crime, poverty, war, and betrayal has an epic sweep rare for such a low-budget production. And although her story occasionally veers into mean-streets clichés, Chaiken's subtle narrative touch, along with the exceptionally strong performances ofleads Al Thompson and Kareem Savinon, gives this one a rare emotional pull."

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NERVE - Bilge Ebiri - 1/06/08

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 ofIlya 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.

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HOLLYWOOD REPORTER - Stephen Farber 7/06/07

Audiences have shied away from gritty dramas about Sept. 11 and its aftermath, as evidenced by the lackluster boxoffice response to "A Mighty Heart." So there are challenges facing "Liberty Kid," a powerful drama that had its premiere in the narrative competition section at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Writer-director Ilya Chaiken deserves credit for offering a novel slant on the tragedy. Instead of confronting the attacks head-on, the film focuses on two young men whose lives are drastically affected by the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Working with tact and subtlety, Chaiken reminds us of the wide-ranging repercussions of this national trauma.

Derrick (Al Thompson) and Tico (Kareem Savinon) are Latino friends from Brooklyn who work in the concessions stand on Liberty Island. When the Statue of Liberty is closed down after Sept. 11, the guys find themselves unemployed and increasingly desperate. Tico leads Derrick into some small-time drug dealing and insurance scams, but Derrick wants to make a respectable living and eventually is tempted to join the Army on the eve of the Iraq invasion.

Without a large budget at her disposal, Chaiken is forced to deal indirectly with the momentous political events of the past five years. Still, she manages to tell us a great deal about the diverse lives affected by these national crises.

Chaiken, the director of the 2001 Sundance Film Festival hit "Margarita Happy Hour," works with a delicate touch. She has a gift for oblique storytelling, which pays off in the surprise revelation that a girl courted by Derrick ends up living with Tico. The treatment of Derrick's devastating experiences in Iraq confirms the director's skill. There was no budget for combat scenes, so the film focuses on his disorientation after his return. A brief scene in which he hears gunshots and is startled by a couple of hooded figures does an economical job of capturing his post-traumatic stress disorder. For a while, he is reduced to living in his car, which makes its own comment on the losses faced by so many Iraq War veterans.

There are times when the film might be too enigmatic. Some of the back stories are frustratingly unexplored. We learn little about Derrick's family or what happened to the mother of his two children. The film also veers perilously close to cliche in episodes of the drug dealing and petty crime. But these banal stretches are more than balanced by the effectively natural acting.

Thompson as the responsible but impressionable Derrick and Savinon as the more volatile Tico give potent, thoroughly believable performances. Much of the byplay between them has a relaxed, improvisatory feel, and the actors convince us of the solidity of the bond between them. Supporting performances also are strong, though one wishes some of the family members were more carefully delineated in the script.

Despite the low budget, the technical credits are proficient. Even though "Liberty Kid" is a small film, much of it is deeply poignant; it enhances our compassion for all the ghosts of Sept. 11. Its cautiously optimistic conclusion also strikes a welcome note without falling into sentimentality.

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LA WEEKLY - Scott Foundas 6/21/07

Writer-director Ilya Chaiken’s sensitively drawn Liberty Kid, two food-service workers at New York’s Liberty Island — fast-talking hustler Tico (Kareem Savinon) and wide-eyed dreamer Derrick (Al Thompson) — find the job opportunities scarce after they’re laid off in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Recruiters of both the military and criminal-life variety soon appear, as the story ventures into that familiar territory of urban youths waylaid by ghetto realities. The strong performances and Chaiken’s vivid NYC locations, however, lend the film unexpected resonance.

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LA DAILY NEWS - Bob Strauss 2/1/08

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.

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POPMATTERS - Cynthia Fuchs 2/11/08

It’s easy to judge Liberty Kid harshly on the grounds that films about working-class men in New York’s outer boroughs have been done, but this trek through The Big Apple’s grittiest terrain is much more than hit-you-over-the-head conflict and drug trading.

Previously lauded films like Eric Eason’s 2002 Sundance Special Jury Prize winner Manito seemed like such extreme ventures into verite affect that the category of character and genre looked like it was staring down the barrel of obsolescence. Ilya Chaiken’s approach to these characters and their conflicts is not actually novel, which is part of why it’s so effective.

Derrick (Al Thompson) and his caustic-but-loyal friend Tico (Kareem Saviñon) are dropouts who work concessions on Liberty Island. As their job is menial and unfulfilling, they find ways to enjoy life after work. Derrick’s nickname is “peace pipe.” A Dominican without citizenship, he’s dark and could mix with both the black cliques and the Latin ones in high school. A natural diplomat, he’s great at conciliation and clearly destined for greater things. Tico, on the other hand, is rough. He’s adaptive, but lacks direction. But he’s very ambitious when it comes to women. The friends seem like they should have nothing to do with each other, yet they’re inseparable.

They’re working by the Statue of Liberty when the twin towers are destroyed. The event, as a national and psychic tragedy, is at the forefront of this story because when the towers go down, Liberty Island is poetically closed. Tico and Derrick lose their jobs indefinitely and spend months searching for replacement work. This is when Derrick takes his high school equivalency, and gets targeted by army recruiters. Ultimately the only work the two friends can get is dealing drugs. When Tico gets arrested, Derrick joins the army.

For as volatile as the subject matter is here, Liberty Kid is shockingly subtle. Massive aspects about the relationship between Tico and Derrick are only inferred and the performances of the leads are really quite good. Yet the most exciting contribution of the film is the inference that this story is a slice of urban life taken from a community that’s ground zero for the war, for the army and for the neglect of the current administration.

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BOXOFFICE - Sara Schieron 2/15/08

Peace Pipe (9 out of 10 stars)

Odalis (Al Thompson) wakes by 6am each morning. His day is jumpstarted by loud hiphop on his clock-radio, his first move always a call to his best friend Tico (Kareem Saviñon), ensuring they’re both on their way at the same time. They work for a concession stand at the Statue of Liberty, unloading cases from the Miss Ellis Island ferry and selling soft-serve yogurt to tourists in Miss Liberty foam hats. It’s a living for Dominican-born Odalis, who has plans to complete his GED and go to college. He prefers to be called “Derrick.”

At its start, Liberty Kid looks to be another movie about kids in Brooklyn, living in crowded apartments and managing complicated lives (as Derrick puts it, “I’ve got bills to pay… and child support for the twins,” his three-year-olds with an unseen ex). But it’s not long before this small, extraordinary movie begins to unveil its many dimensions. During a night out with a couple of girls, Tico rolls his eyes when Derrick’s self-description turns “corny”: D calls himself a “visionary” (one of the girls wonders, “What’s that, a dreamer?"), but Tico, he “prefer[s] to live in the moment, you feel me?” Back in high school, before they were kicked out, Derrick was called “Peace Pipe,” because he was “stuck somewhere in the middle,” a Dominican kid who looks black, trying to keep peace between the Spanish kids and the black kids.

Like many people’s, Derrick’s plans are derailed on 9/11. He and Tico are on the island when the planes hit. The first one looks like it’s an accident, so their boss sends the crew back to work; Derrick watches the two Towers burning through a pair of coin-operated binoculars, sirens and chopper sounds faint in the background as the distant, bounded view offers a smart allusion to the mass-mediation of the day. Once the shock of the attacks is over, the effects build and shift over months: at the corner bodega where he buys his Newports, Derrick spots an Arabic-looking kid being harangued by a crew of others. As the frightened kid hides in the back and the others press their faces against front window, Derrick makes peace again, as best he can, offering to walk the boy home, the mini bullies scattering as he approaches the door.

The film follows the slow turns and declensions in Tico and Derrick’s options. When the Statue closes, they lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in their depressed neighborhood. They slide into street corner drug deals, promoting parties, and a patently ridiculous insurance scam that has Derrick slamming his junker into a friend’s car in hopes of a $15,000 payday promised by a “lawyer” one of the kids says he knows. Derrick’s mom Awilda (Rosa Ramos) worries. She’s headed back to the DR to care for her own ailing mother, and cautions her son before she leaves, about “those boys you think are your friends.” When he ends up beaten and bloodied during a petty drug deal arranged by Tico, Derrick also misses a chance to see Denice (Raquel Jordan), a pretty girl he’s just met.Even as his options dwindle and he feels betrayed by Tico, Derrick follows through on taking his GED. When he takes the exam, the shots are familiar but also evocative: on the sidewalk he passes flyers, efforts to find people missing on 9/11; in the test room, close-ups of his pencil and glances around the room at other kids’ heads bowed over their papers tell you even before his voiceover how he’s feeling: “What am I even doing here?” he sighs, pencil tapping. “I need to smoke a blunt right now, if I had a blunt I could answer all this shit, I know I could.” In the hallway outside the test room, Derrick passes Army recruiters are taking names and handing out t-shirts, in English and Spanish ("Yo soy Army"), they can have “just for signing here, to receive further information.”

Delicately and profoundly, Liberty Kid, winner of the Best Film award at the New York Latino Film Festival, reveals the far-reaching, long-lasting effects of 9/11 on a kid without resources or recourse. Smart, charismatic, and ambitious, Derrick is nevertheless a product of his time and place. If other movies about the aftermath of 9/11 focus on broad themes—rising fears or variously defined “politics”—Ilya Chaiken’s movie is more interested in details, the small, indelible ways that lives have been changed, the consequences of loneliness, poverty, and depression, daily life in the hood. Derrick, erstwhile “Peace Pipe,” resents and admires Tico’s ability to “live in the moment,” to forget obligations or insist on them when convenient. Derrick considers his many responsibilities and finds few solutions.

Indeed, Derrick is skeptical of the Army recruiter’s suggestion that joining up is only about opportunities ("In the army,” he says, “You’ll get money for college and you’ll live rent free"). Asked what his mother thinks of his enlistment, Derrick admits, “She’s afraid I’m gonna have to go to war.” Right, says the recruiter, looking earnestly into the boy’s eyes, “That’s a mother’s job, to make my job more complicated.” Even if he does go to war, the recruiter smiles, chances are good he’ll come back fine: “You know how many men were lost in Afghanistan so far? A whole lot less than here in the hood.”

It’s a cheap tactic, and typical. Derrick signs his name, the film crosscutting to Tico, embodying another possibility, busted by undercover cops for selling on the corner: it’s a stupid move, and also typical. Two routes to “manhood,” in prison and in the army: if Tico survives more or less intact, it’s because he’s built for resistance, angry and expectant. Finding Derrick months later, he’s frustrated that his friend, suffering from PTSD and sleeping in his car, won’t take him up on the chance to live with him and his babymama. A group session featuring real Iraq war veterans ("Sometimes I feel alienated, like I don’t belong here sometimes” or again, “I can’t sleep, like my heart starts racing… There was a time when I was having like three or four nightmares a night") illustrates the dead end facing Derrick, having served his country, now coming “home.” The effects of his wars—multiple, low-key, endless—were in motion long before he went to Afghanistan.

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