What's amazing about their existing homes is just how successful they've been in recreating all the amenities of standard New York apartments. Their living quarters go well beyond cardboard boxes and shopping carts. They live in sturdy rooms made of plywood, using water pipes to supply running water and tapping master power lines to feed appliances found on the upper streets. It's almost enough to make someone who pays to inhabit one of New York's shoebox apartments jealous.

Almost. For life is unimaginably difficult for these courageous souls, whether they have seceded from the world above by choice or out of social rejection and poverty. Some sink deeper into drugs. Others struggle constantly, recycling old soda cans and scavenging for tossed-out food just to keep themselves alive.

In the end, Marc Singer's documentary did not save these men and women from their subterranean sanctuary. But Marc Singer did. At least, in part. In a conventional documentary, you would mind that the movie doesn't include this most important aspect, when the darkness dwellers finally emerge into the light to begin again. BBut here, we know that the camera wasn't rolling because the filmmaker was too busy working with the Coalition for the Homeless to secure housing vouchers, rather than watching objectively from the outskirts. What I wouldn't give for a news story in which the journalist sets down his camera and decides to make a difference instead.

This is that kind of movie, a tale of remarkable heroism on the part of its subjects (who also served as the film's crew, using the camera's eye to reflect candidly on their own hardship) and remarkable restraint on the part of the filmmaker. It comes together with such remarkable humanism in the editing room -- nicely complimented by soulful tracks specially remixed by DJ Shadow — that I can honestly say I have never been so profoundly moved by a film.

[as featured on Moviefone.com]