Half road trip and half learning how to make a home, “Trucker” gives Michelle Monaghan a chance to show what she can do and the result is encouraging, although twelve year old Jimmy Bennett nearly steals the show
In writer/director James Mottern’s new personal identity film, Michelle Monaghan (“Kiss Kiss Bang Bang”—2005, “North Country”) plays Diane Ford, a self-made independent woman who turns out to be less independent than she thought. Helping on the road to self realization is twelve year old Jimmy Bennett playing Ford’s eleven year old son, Peter. If Monaghan’s acting is sufficient, young Bennett’s is excellent and helped considerably by his wiser-than-his-years lines penned by Mottern.
In many films the writer/director role is too much for one person to handle. In this film Mottern is able to use a simple story to give him the time and space to work on the presentation of the character’s lines. This is vitally important in keeping the film true-to-life and not becoming a moral lecture.
The setting is the sun baked hills of Southern California and points east, and the excellently matched country-western soundtrack produced by Mychael Danna deepens the aimlessness of the open road with a touch of a silver lining. The songs seem to float along with the trucks and cars as Diane and Peter encounter one challenge after another to their attempted bonding. The trucker urban myth is not exploited in this film, but explained with the utmost realism---Diane would rather be a trucker than a waitress or a nurse.
The storyline is formulaic: the young mother has learned to live without her son and the two are only reunited due to the serious illness of her ex-hubby. Both have serious misgivings. This would be a boring story if not for the seriously funny lines of son Peter who, being the parent for most of the film, shows mom Diane why she should stop living like a kid. The two are as much enemies as allies.
Broken family films usually become either maudlin or patronizing. Indeed, this film walks that line but somehow avoids falling into the dungeon of self-pity due to Mottern’s sharp and lean dialog. Great supporting work by Nathan Fillion as Runner, Diane’s married wanna-be boyfriend. The two appear in some pretty durn good drunken shenanigans that are actually funny. Drunk jokes rarely make a film, but these are added with such perfect realism that many will reflect on having been there, whether they like it or not. Also contributing to the overall success of the film are Joey Lauren Adams and Benjamin Bratt.
The saving grace of this movie is that it is able to depict a dead-end life style without succumbing to a lurid tabloid approach. The people are hurting in this film, but they are getting along. As they get along they grow, eventually to become the adults they were supposed to be in the first place. In the beginning, young Peter is forced to be the adult. In the end he is allowed to be the boy he desperately wants to be.
The scenery is a stark backdrop of the plains and hills of the Southwest US, with occasional stops to modest homes in the forgotten suburbs and small towns dotting the highways of the arid plains. The houses, bars and convenience stores are not Tobacco Road shanties with mournfully ignorant people, they are well-kept but modest structures that subtly point to a better way. The cars are not jalopies, but they are not Cadillac’s, either. The characters are able to live and get around with a great deal of freedom.
The fact that they have too much freedom allows the film to emphasize their lost lives and underscore the necessity of connection and genuine affection for their fellow human beings. In the end they learn that it sometimes takes work to love others but it’s worth the trouble.
Release: Tribeca Film Festival
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