Trucker

If you couldn’t tell by the increasing snarkiness of my comments about some of the movies we’ve been watching, I’m getting a little tired of special-effects-laden movies full of blood, sex, and cussin’ and rather short on things like an interesting plot and characters.

So we watched a movie with, as far as I could tell, no special effects at all, and very little blood. There was some sex (not much, really) but a lot of cussin’. Interesting plot and characters, though.

TRUCKER is the story of a long-haul truck driver named Diane, well-played by Michelle Monaghan, who abandoned her husband and one-year-old son a decade earlier because she couldn’t stand to be tied down by a family. As the movie opens, though, her ex-husband is dying of cancer and the second wife can’t take care of the boy, so Diane, much against her will, has to raise her own son for a while. Emotional fireworks ensue.

This is a pretty slow-moving film, but it’s very well-acted by everyone, including Nathan Fillion as Diane’s neighbor and friend who is obviously in love with her. Everyone in the story is deeply flawed and wounded but ultimately tries to do the right thing. It’s not exactly heart-warming, but it comes close a time or two. The photography, featuring a lot of impressive vistas of the western United States, is beautiful.

Overall, I liked TRUCKER. It’s not the sort of movie that makes you sit up and say, “Wow, that was a great film!” But I enjoyed it and thought it was a nice change of pace from our usual movie fare. I can recommend it, as long as you remember that nothing Blows Up Real Good.