speaking of Best Actress contenders....


Roger Ebert's review:


There's one of those perfect moments in "Trucker" when I'm thinking, This is the moment to end! Now! Fade to black! And the movie ends. It is the last of many absolutely right decisions by the first-time writer-director James Mottern, who began by casting two actors who bring his story to strong emotional life. Both of them show they're gifted and intelligent artists who only needed, as so many do in these discouraging times, a chance to reveal their deep talents.

Michelle Monaghan was on the brink of inhabiting forever the thankless role of the good-looking, plucky female in action movies about men ("Mission: Impossible III"). She was excellent in "Gone Baby Gone," and here she confirms her talent. Jimmy Bennett, who was 11 or 12 at the time of shooting, has been good in heavy-duty projects before ("Orphan") and played the young Captain Kirk in "Star Trek" (2009), but here shows a subtlety and command of tone that is remarkable. (It's time for him to start billing himself as James. He'll be relieved when he's 20.) Together these actors create an abrasive relationship that sidesteps all sentimentality, in a film that correctly ends when a lesser film would have added half an hour of schmaltz.

Monaghan is Diane Ford, a trucker who just paid off her own rig. She's 30-ish, cold, hard-drinking, promiscuous, a loner. Bennett plays her son, Peter. She left him with his father Len (Benjamin Bratt) soon after his birth, has stayed away, doesn't like kids -- or men, either, although she uses them. One man (Nathan Fillion) has been her best friend for four years, but that involves getting drunk together and never having sex.

Len gets sick. Colon cancer. He's been living for years with Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams), who now needs time to care for him. It's up to Diane to look after the kid. She doesn't want anything to do with him. "Just for a few weeks," Jenny pleads. Just until Len gets better. Sure.

You are anticipating, as I did, that "Trucker" would turn into one of those predictable movies where the mother and son grow to love each other. It doesn't end with mutual hate and abandonment, but it damn near does. The kid is as tough as his mom. "Answer me!" she says. "I don't talk to bitches!" he says. Len and Jenny seem nice enough. Where did he learn to talk like that? Little pitchers have big ears.

I concede the story arc is fairly predictable, assuming neither one murders the other. But Mottern and his actors take no hostages. Diane is hard and tough, and stays that way. Her son is angry and bitter, and stays that way. Does they need to love and be loved? Sure. We know that, but they don't. By the end of the film, she hasn't called him "Peter" and he hasn't called her "Mom." He's "kid" or "dude," and she's "you." They have to be together whether they like it or not, and they know it.

That said, Monaghan makes Diane more sad than off-putting. She isn't a caricature. She works hard, values her independence, is making payments on her small suburban home on an unpaved street, is living up to her bargain with herself. The movie spares us any scenes where she's "one of the guys." It opens after a one-night stand with a guy who tries to be nice, but she doesn't need a nice guy in her life. Nor does she need to be nice with Peter, but one thing she does do: She's always honest with him and speaks with him directly, and I think he knows that. Her performance clearly deserves an Oscar nomination.

Peter is loved by his father and Jenny. He hasn't been mistreated. He probably senses how sick his dad really is and knows he wasn't parked with Diane because anyone wanted him there. He's been told things about his mother that are, strictly speaking, true. She did leave him and Len soon after his birth. She does want to avoid seeing him. He says something revealing that he knows of her promiscuity, although he may not quite understand it.

What Mottern does is lock these two characters in a story and sees what happens. Something will have to give. The supporting performances by Nathan Fillion, Benjamin Bratt and Joey Lauren Adams are precisely what is needed: direct, open, no "acting," good tone control. They are good people, but very real people, with no illusions about life.

I value films that closely regard specific lives. I know they usually must have happy endings. Not always. Haven't we all learned to expect certain things in a story about a mother and a son? Aren't those things in fact generally true to human nature? I hope to feel elevation at the end. But a film should earn it, not simply evoke it. "Trucker" sets out on a difficult and tricky path, and doesn't put a thing wrong.



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Aaron Hillis of The Village Voice:


After undervalued supporting turns in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, North Country, and Gone Baby Gone, dainty girl-next-door type Michelle Monaghan finally, and deservedly, snags a star vehicle to show off her chops. Against the roadside Americana of writer-director James Mottern's well-shot desert drama, Monaghan flips the bird to vanity as a hard-drinking, promiscuous, blithe, and ballsy big-rig driver named Diane, and her performance is transformative enough to forgive Mottern's boilerplate narrative. It's the negligent parent and estranged child forced-reunion tale: Diane's long-hauler lifestyle is literally slowed down when her angry 11-year-old son, Peter (Jimmy Bennett), gets dumped in her lap after baby-daddy Len (Benjamin Bratt) is hospitalized with cancer. There may as well be a road sign announcing Diane's transformation from reckless loner to diligent mother, but it's a smooth ride thanks to Monaghan, and an impressive ensemble. Bennett, last seen in Shorts, proves one of the more talented, least cloyingly precocious child actors today, and the always-charming Nathan Fillion continues his run as a married local who can barely suppress his feelings for bar buddy Diane.

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Stephen Holden of The New York Times

“I don’t want you to think I just used you or anything,” a polite young hunk says to Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan), moments after their steamy tryst, as she hurries to leave their motel room in the opening scene of “Trucker.” A lean, attractive woman with a hard look in her eye, Diane is in such a rush to get back to work driving an enormous rig that she doesn’t bother to thank the stranger for a good time.



That kind of one-night stand has traditionally been the perquisite of macho kings of the road who drive the same kind of gigantic trucks Diane is shown operating with a brisk efficiency. Seizing a role that a decade ago would have been offered to Ashley Judd, Ms. Monaghan (“Eagle Eye,” “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” “Mission Impossible III”) makes the most of her character, a can-do, don’t-waste-my-time kind of gal without a shred of sentimentality, impatiently elbowing her way into a male-dominated occupation.



Diane’s free-spirited life is suddenly complicated when her estranged 11-year-old son, Peter (Jimmy Bennett), is dropped off at her California home without advance notice. The boy’s father, Len (Benjamin Bratt), whom Diane hasn’t seen in more than a decade, is in the hospital with colon cancer. Because his current partner, Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams), has urgent family business to take care of, the boy has nowhere else to stay but with his biological mother.



If Ms. Monaghan gives a possibly award-worthy performance in “Trucker,” the vehicle (if you will pardon the pun) doesn’t quite know what to do with her character. And so the movie, the first feature written and directed by James Mottern, turns into a conventional mother-child reunion drama that stops just short of becoming a fuzzy tear-jerking celebration of the emergence of Diane’s Inner Mom.



Rather than give up work and remain home, Diane decides to take Peter on the road with her. Warily, the mother and son begin to warm to each other. Diane shows that she cares by pitching baseballs to her son and going after some teenagers who harass him at a mini-mall. But she never loses her feisty edge. The movie’s biggest failure is its refusal to allow either mother or son a moment’s reflection about their years apart.



The movie throws in an awkward, underdeveloped subplot involving Diane and her drinking buddy, Runner (Nathan Fillion), a married next-door neighbor who, like every man to cross Diane’s path, is besotted with her. After one barhopping expedition, Diane, who holds her liquor better than most men, bodily drags Runner out of a pickup truck and plops him at his front door.



The truck stops, dispatching offices, highways and unglamorous neighborhoods through which Diane moves with a lithe, confident stride are minimally sketched in a movie that cries out for more detail and pungent atmosphere. When Mr. Bratt, looking seriously peaked, belatedly appears, his abbreviated scene with Ms. Monaghan leaves you wishing for more history about a connection that both agree was sizzling at its outset.



“Trucker” sometimes feels like a performance in search of a movie.



“Trucker” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has one sex scene and some strong language.



TRUCKER



Opens on Friday in Manhattan.



Written and directed by James Mottern; director of photography, Lawrence Sher; edited by Deirdre Slevin; music by Mychael Danna; production designer, Cabot McMullen; produced by Celine Rattray, Galt Niederhoffer, Daniela Taplin Lundberg and Scott Hanson; released by Monterey Media. At the Village East, Second Avenue at 12th Street, East Village. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes.



WITH: Michelle Monaghan (Diane Ford), Nathan Fillion (Runner), Benjamin Bratt (Len Bonner), Joey Lauren Adams (Jenny Bell) and Jimmy Bennett (Peter).

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In all, the film is getting mixed to fine reviews, but Michelle Monaghan is getting some great notcies, and I imagine the Ebert one will be built up tremendously.

I hope so, the trailer looks great for her. I can't wait for this film to come to a theater closer to me.

I really want to see this. I don't think it'll come out by me but I'm going to NYC soon so maybe I can squeeze it in then.

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly
www.ew.com


Whenever an actress takes on a gritty working-class role, the audience does a gut check of authenticity. Either the 
 actress gets it, like Melissa Leo did in Frozen River, or she doesn't, like Michelle Monaghan as the spoilin'-for-a-fight truck-driver heroine of the inert indie dud Trucker. Monaghan, so good in Gone Baby Gone, mopes self-consciously through the role of Diane, a loner who finds her heart when she's thrown together with her estranged 11-year-old son (Jimmy Bennett), whom she takes on the road. Yes, it's one of those movies. D

Ebert clearly supports her - which worked out for Crash and Ellen Page... but with a film this small a better parallel might be Angela Bettis, who Ebert backed fervently for "May" but didn't manage to get her to go anywhere.

Monaghan would be an interesting name to throw into the mix but unfortunately I don't think it'll happen. She's a nice actress; I like her presence

The last film to make under $1 million at the box office and receive an acting nomination was Tom & Viv in 1994. Trucker has made less than $5,000 this past weekend. I just doubt enough people will see Trucker to give it any awards traction.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jilpen,

Is it gone from NY already? I was gonna try to catch it. But I only see California showtimes on the IMDb.

quote:

Review: 2 Cajuns & A Truck Moving Svc

I had trouble with them in that they showed up 30 minutes late, one spent 20 minutes in the truck while on the clock talking to his wife, they made two trips back and forth to the storage building and I beat them there and back both times by at least 10 minutes each way. Then they broke the leg off my desk, blamed me and said well it was in bad shape. It is only from the 1940's so I guess all antiques should be treated like crap. Meanwhile I had a small storage room in the back. It was twenty feet from the house. Instead of getting the 20 boxes that were in there. They had to lift the ramp to their truck, back it up and get it 15 feet closer to the building then, unload the ramp again and this took a good 15 minutes. Then to beat all of that they deemed what they would move or not. Lamps they moved some and left some, bicycles, bbq pits nope they didn't move those so after they got finished I ended up renting a small truck and moving myspace further. I was just a tad frustrated with the whole thing.
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passing a drug test | pass drug testing | printers washington

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jocky87,

Betsy Sharkey of The Los Angeles Times


We see the boots first, then the leather cigarette case, the silver lighter -- all very worn, very male -- in the seedy motel room where sounds of sex, raw and desperate, fill the air.

But appearances are rarely what they seem in "Trucker." It will be the woman who shrugs off the night; the boots and the rest are hers too. Lean and sinewy, she heads for an 18-wheeler in the parking lot out front, slides behind the wheel and kicks the engine into a dull roar. As the road stretches out in front of her, only then does she breathe easy.

This is just the first of many miles we will travel with Michelle Monaghan's Diane Ford, the sexy tough chick in the fast lane of writer-director James Mottern's haunting tale of motherhood lost and found.

There are so many wonderfully unconventional things to like about this tiny independent film, Monaghan's earthy and uncompromising performance chief among them, its depth surprising you at every turn. That the trucker of the title, a take-no-prisoner's woman barely in her 30s with a taste for whiskey, late nights and rough sex, is a mother is one of the first.

It is almost as much of a surprise to Diane. Her boy, who she hasn't seen in years, is unexpectedly dropped off one night. His dad, her ex (Benjamin Bratt), is fighting cancer and the stepmom (Joey Lauren Adams) has too much to handle. It will only be temporary, but Diane knows even temporary will upend her life in ways she's not interested in exploring.

Peter (Jimmy Bennett) is 11, and he is just as reluctant about the arrangement. The back story comes out in the half-sentences of resentment he hurls in her direction. Diane's the stranger who left him when he was a baby. In a sense, he's a chip off the block, erecting a wall of anger just like his mother to keep the world from getting too close.

Mottern takes his time with the relationship, letting Diane feel her way toward Peter, who is locked in a deep sulk anyway. Circumstances conspire to force her to take him on the road for one haul with truck stops turning out to be not exactly a safe hangout for a kid.

Diane comes to mothering slowly, reluctantly and in her own way. When some punks at a convenience store across from their motel hassle Peter one night, she storms out in her wife-beater tee, underwear and socks to register a complaint with a few well-placed punches. Mother love, when it comes, turns out to be fierce. As is Monaghan, who creates a kind of visceral force field that flashes in her eyes and tightens the muscles across her back.

There are men everywhere in this world, but they are not the kind a woman can lean on even if that was her way. Runner (Nathan Fillion) is the best friend she's in love with but won't sleep with because he's married. He follows her around like a puppy, fixing things around her house in hopes it will fix their relationship. Bratt's Len, a terminal case, exists around the edges, a good thing since even in a hospital gown he looks as if he's just back from a workout at the gym -- it's the one performance that really doesn't work and an unfortunate distraction.

And then there is 12-year-old Bennett. You may remember him as a young James Kirk in the most recent "Star Trek" or as the best thing about Robert Rodriguez's dreadful "Shorts." Bennett just gets stronger with each role he takes on. His disaffected Peter, eyes ducking under a shag of hair, shoulders slumped as if that might help him disappear, is more than willing to tangle with his mother's moods.

Though this is Mottern's first feature film, he has an unhurried style that gives the movie and its characters time to breathe in all the right places. He has said he was inspired by movies like "Five Easy Pieces," low-riding character studies, and you see that influence most when Diane's on the road. He captures the sense of freedom and beauty of crossing the country in the cocoon of a cab, 18 wheels spinning you forward. There is an attention to detail you see in the dusty, down-market San Diego neighborhood where Diane lives and the quiet order of her house, a counterpoint to the chaos of her life.

Mottern has given us a rare thing, a blue-collar woman with the grit and righteous strength of a Clint Eastwood character. Monaghan has given her heart.