[Contains minor spoilers - for full review see link below]
…Half road trip and half learning how to make a home, “Trucker” gives Michelle Monaghan a chance to show what she can do and the result is encouraging, although twelve year old Jimmy Bennett nearly steals the show
… If Monaghan’s acting is sufficient, young Bennett’s is excellent and helped considerably by his wiser-than-his-years lines penned by Mottern. (more…)
Below you’ll find short exerpts from Trucker reviews on the web, sourced where possible. This post will be updated reguarly as reviews become available.
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I attended a press screening on Saturday at the Tribeca Film Festival. Trucker is great. Strong cast, powerful film. A bit on the predictable side but it still is solid — ProductionGirl IMDB User
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The third film I saw on Sunday was called Trucker. It stars Michelle Monaghan as a truck driver whose 11-year-old son from a very early marriage pops back into her life. She’s used to being kind of solitary, and really isn’t prepared for this. The director, James Mottern, told us beforehand that Michelle couldn’t be here, but she really wanted us to know that she did drive the trucks herself. She didn’t even have a regular driver’s license at the time, but she went to school to learn how to drive the big rigs. (more…)
“I like gritty,” the actress told me, following a screening of the independent film Trucker, in which she gives her Cas Diane, a hard-living truck driver who finds herself unexpectedly reunited with the son she left behind years before when she split from her husband.
“When I first read the script, I didn’t like Diane at all. She’s seriously flawed and I was appalled by her behaviour towards her son. (more…)
But she hasn’t had a chance to carry a movie until “Trucker,” which had its world premiere at New York’s recent Tribeca Film Festival, and makes us realize what we’ve been missing.
Her performance elicits the same exhilarating sense of discovery that surrounded Sally Field’s breakthrough in “Norma Rae.” And there are some parallels between those two characters. Monaghan’s Diane is a bruised, ballsy woman who’s made something of a mess of her life. She goes through a transformation during the course of the story and emerges as strong rather than merely tough. Although the film doesn’t have the social import that made “Norma Rae” a hit, it’s an affecting, small-scale film that could catch on with sophisticated audiences as well as more down-home types.
…the performances carry the movie. Writer-director James Mottern demonstrates both rigor and tenderness in his feature debut.
Monaghan shows absolutely no vanity in exposing the hard, reckless side of the character, and Bennett matches her. Already a veteran of a dozen movies, the youth exudes an unaffected ease that other child actors might envy. The strongest scenes come in the unsentimental tug of war between mother and son. Nathan Fillion is enormously likable as Diane’s best pal who might have the potential to be something more. Although Bratt’s role is rather underdeveloped, he gives dimension to his few scenes. The atmosphere of roadside Americana is genuinely portrayed, as well. The story may not be earth-shaking, but Monaghan’s star-making performance assures that it will be remembered.
