Ugh.
I know I shouldn't bother because
you have stated your "rights", but I have to ask anyway.
At the end of the day the film has to draw us in and give us a reason to care about what is happening on screen.
And we certainly don’t care about Ale (Alejandro Polanco)
Why don't 'we' (surely you mean 'you', unless you are more than one personality, which would at least explain the numbers and erratic viewing habits) care? Can you tell us? Did you contemplate it at all? What about the film stopped you caring? You first seem to indicate that it maybe had something to do with the film's breaking out of the conventional Hollywood mold, but didn't really explain why that is. You just stated it and then moved on to a total misreading of the film's character's actions towards each other and the story's "thematic underpinning" - that in areas of extreme poverty, lives, especially those of children, are often nasty, brutal and short, causing them to age before their time, and (in the case of the adults) to have little time for sentiment or those who cannot help them advance out that milieu, and that it is precisely Ale's resourcefulness and naive or 'childlike' optimism in the face of these conditions that makes his actions interesting, tragic, and moving - and then repeated yourself.
The problem is that we don’t care about Ale or his fate.
Why not?!
This could have been a fantastic look at a society that forces children to act with wisdom they don’t have or how this subculture is more than willing to screw over kids. And while this film touches on both it isn’t really about anything. All it’s really about is following this kid through this curious and interesting lifestyle, but we aren’t given a reason to care.
Here, you're contradicting yourself. You do get it - the films is indeed a "look at a society that forces children to act with wisdom they don’t have or how this subculture is more than willing to screw over kids" - and that is our reason to care. What would have made you care more? Perhaps he should have had a gimpy leg, or someone should have threatened to gouge his eyes out to really ram the message home?
Chop Shop thinks that being different it can be good.
Furthermore, the film has no ideological thought behind it, it simply is.
Films don't think. Or do they? I would have less problems with your review if it was coherent. Maybe you could try thinking about them a bit, rather than just letting them simply 'be'?