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closeThursday, Oct. 22, 2009
Stop and see 'Trucker’
Trucker Productions/Kevin Estrada
BRAKE IT OFF: Michelle Monaghan is at an impasse with her son in Trucker. Trucker Productions/Kevin Estrada
Trucker
****
R (sex, strong language, brief drug use involving minors, sexual assault); 93 min.
Trucker has all the makings of a melodramatic, mawkish lunge for Oscar gold. A struggling single mom and trucker is forced to reconnect with the 11-year-old son she hasn’t seen since he was a baby after his dad, with whom he has been living, comes down with terminal colon cancer.
It’s the kind of role a glamorous mega-star might take to prove her thespian credentials. Thankfully, first-time director/writer James Mottern didn’t — or perhaps couldn’t afford to — go that route. Instead, he nabbed relative unknown Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye, Gone Baby Gone) and fashioned a lean script and film stripped of big-budget excess sentimentality and lo-fi hipster indie clichés. It’s a wise choice, as Trucker is a knockout.
Monaghan is Diane Ford, a hard-living, long-haul truck driver who seems barely able to keep her life together when her son Peter (Jimmy Bennett, young James Kirk in Star Trek) is dropped off at her door because his father (Benjamin Bratt) is dying. She has no motherly instincts, and the boy has no desire to live with someone who he feels abandoned him.
Meanwhile, her platonic friendship with the married Runner (Nathan Fillion from the TV shows Castle and Serenity) threatens to mushroom into much more. Ford has to navigate through her feelings about the men in her life and what kind of future she wants — something she had rarely considered.
Monaghan is phenomenal as Diane, playing it understated yet riveting. She is helped by a strong cast, especially Bennett, who shows much more range here than he ever could in Star Trek.
Mottern has been quoted as saying that he was very much influenced by such ’70s filmic character studies as Five Easy Pieces, The Last Picture Show and The Last Detail. Obviously he has learned from the best, and, if Trucker is any indication, he might one day join them.
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— Cary Darling
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