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It's, like, not about liking it ["Trucker"]
I don't know if you'll like the movie “Trucker.” Hey, I don't know if I like it.
A woman drives a big rig truck. She's very much her own person. She had a kid 11 years before the movie starts, but soon after that, she just up and left him and his dad. You sense there wasn't enough reason to do it.
It's enough to drop the movie flat just because … what kind of mom does that? Wait, you probably wouldn't drop a movie flat if the dad was his own person and did such a thing. You'd probably allow for the story to be what it is.
Of course, this movie dad was a great dad all those years, but dad has cancer. The complexities of that is why the kid gets thrust, after no contact for 10 years, into mom's don't-do-this-to-me life.
A brave turn in filmmaking that makes untypical choices, “Trucker” is not about liking it. There's grit and discomfort in this film that's worth experiencing.
Maybe your life runs fairly normal, and you don't want to go to the movies to see life as untidy as what's in this film. Maybe your life is too messy, and you don't want to be entertaining a film that's anything like what you really have to deal with.
There's love in this film. It's like a gold mine that's pretty hard scraping for the amount of gold that turns up, but it's gold, and
it's enough to keep you digging it.
Besides the different kinds of love to mine from the dad and the mom and the boy, there's the understated love of the stepmother, plus one of the most peculiar reserved relationships you'll ever see between a couple of adults in a movie.
Several of the story particulars seem too movie-like for a film that feels so real in so many scenes. It's better to focus on the acting from a fine ensemble cast led by Michelle Monaghan. You'll likely feel a strangely rewarding return from a rich-enough film.
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