Trucker

Starring: Michelle Monaghan, Jimmy Bennett, Nathan Fillon, & Benjamin Bratt

Director: James Mottern - Rating: R - Score: 2 Stars

Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan) lives a solitary life. She loves her job as big rig driver, alcohol, and one night stands with strangers. Her life is exactly how she wants it to be, until he ex gets sick and she's forced to take in her 12 year old son, Peter (Jimmy Bennett), a son she never wanted, and has no idea what to do with. Trucker comes across as an edgy lifetime movie, with the sick ex-husband, the angry woman with the scarred past, and the child who is going to force her to change. Unfortunately, I don't like Lifetime movies, because they are so predictable and one-sided. That is exactly what Trucker is aside from the indiscriminate sex and cursing. I found almost nothing interesting about this film, except for the chemistry between mother and son. Peter is the best part of the film, because he's this weird looking kid in heavy metal shirts, calling his mother out on all of her bull. The things he says to her are pretty shocking and quite funny, and that's the only thing I can really say I enjoyed about this movie. It's clear that the writers were going for this dark, mid-western dramatic thing, that I like to call modern dark noir, (as seen in films like Winter's Bone), but they fall well short. Trucker just doesn't have enough substance to compete with films like that and is predictable to a fault. If I were describe this film in one word, it would be boring, and that is never a good thing.