Trucker
Written and directed by James Mottern
Running time 93 minutes
With an appealingly unappealing lead performance from Michelle Monaghan at its center, you want to like Trucker. You really do. But writer-director James Mottern makes it awfully hard with his washed-out, predictable aesthetic.
Except that a woman who looks like Diane (Monaghan) would never end up as a big rig truck driver, Trucker is hell bent on staying as obvious as possible. Diane’s life of no responsibilities other than getting her cargo in on time for her bonus, a life filled with one-night stands on the road and nights at the VFW hall with her friend Runner (Nathan Fillion, who could play this charming rogue in his sleep at this point), is seriously compromised by the arrival of her 11-year-old son Peter (Jimmy Bennett). After leaving Peter and his father a decade before, Diane is less than thrilled to have him sleeping on her couch; as is Peter, who routinely calls his mother a bitch. But Mottern is determined to put these characters through their genre paces, including a “Where is my son?” moment when Diane gets a glimpse of how much she secretly cares for the son she’s successfully forgotten for 10 years, and the requisite third act trauma that brings mother and son closer.
Still, even as you cynically guess the next plot turn, there’s something inherently watchable in Monaghan, even while Trucker itself conjures up memories of Joey Lauren Adams’s unjustly neglected Come Early Morning, starring Ashley Judd as a lonely woman who fills her life with one night stands and too much booze. Adams herself even pops up for a few brief scenes in Trucker.
Mottern is clearly aiming for an easy-going, character-driven film, but his sentimental plot—complete with a precocious child hiding his vulnerability behind a smart mouth—defeats his ambitions at every turn. Also hurting matters is the barren, beige cinematography from Lawrence Sher, who seems to go out of his way to make Diane’s world seem as colorless and bland as possible.
Not a moment rings true in Trucker, but Monaghan doesn’t seem aware of it as she quietly goes about the business of revealing the beating heart beneath Diane’s gruff exterior. Too bad she’s wasting it on such a minor character, when she should be in a film worthy of her talents.
