For Reel

Director: James Mottern

“Trucker” is a movie with a very good performance and nothing to do with it. It’s pleasant enough company while it lasts – as just about any road movie is – but on-the-nose writing, over-sentimentality, and a story arc stubbornly hampered by pure formula stalls the film from keeping up with the momentum of it’s impeccably talented lead, Michelle Monaghan.

We’ve seen plenty of films about men living on the road, but in “Trucker” we’re introduced to Diane Ford (Michelle Monaghan), a woman so self-assured that she’s well beyond just-one-of-the-boys. In the opening scene, she flees a one night stand while her partner attempts to assure her that he didn’t simply use her. She’s headed off, clad in a white tank top, jeans, and a flannel, to the rig she’s finally managed to pay off.

When Diane’s ex-husband, Len (Benjamin Bratt), is diagnosed with colon cancer, and his new companion, Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams), must attend to family matters, she is left to look after the son (Jimmy Bennett) she left a decade previous. As we can expect, the tough-as-nails, rugged woman is transformed by her equally self-governing companion.

Monaghan is perhaps too gorgeous for this role, but she’s good in a way similar to George Clooney in “Up in the Air”. On the road, she’s so free of companionship that we can only question whether or not she’s honestly content with her independence. Perhaps the film’s biggest handicap is that it doesn’t have the same caliber of supporting talent as that film. Bratt, Adams, and Nathan Fillion, as a love interest, are all capable actors, but here they don’t bring much to characters that are already severely lacking on the page.

One of a million mother-child reunion melodramas, “Trucker” feels lazy and hardly conceived – Monaghan brings it her all, but the economical, humdrum script handicaps her severely.