When you are an undocumented immigrant just trying to
survive daily life in the US can be very tough.
Carlos, a middle-aged Mexican, and single parent gets by working as a
gardener tending the lawns of wealthy Los Angeles homeowners. He lives hand to mouth in a tiny rundown
house, barely making ends meet, with Luis his teenage son who he is desperate to
provide with a better life. A crooked
Lawyer who had promised to make him a legal resident took what little money he
had managed to save.
Carlos works for Blasco another Mexican who has earned
enough money to buy a farm back home and so how now wants to sell his truck and
the landscaping business. However as
Carlos cannot get a driving license he is petrified of driving in the city as
if the Police for any reason ever stop him, it would result in his deportation. As the alternative is to go back on the
street hustling for rare casual laboring jobs, Carlos decides to take the risk
and take up Blasco's offer. To do so he
needs to persuade his married sister to lend him the money, and she bravely
hands over her life’s savings to her big brother as he supported her in the
past when they first arrived in the US.
First day out working as his own Boss and Carlos picks
up an itinerant worker to help him, but the man does more than that and as
Carlos is up a tree working, he helps himself to the truck and all the
tools. Carlos now jobless again, broke, and
in debt to his sister for $4000, so he and Luis set off together see if they
can trace the man and get the truck back.
This heart-wrenching emotional-charged movie’s
accurate portrayal of how tough a life like this can be is so convincing mainly
due to the tour-de-force performance of Demian Bichir as Carlos which has rightly earned him a Golden Globe Nomination. He has a quiet and rigid determination to do
what’s necessary to ensure that Luis will not be forced into the well-trodden
route of a gang member like all the other latino youths in his circle. The relationship between father and son is
not particularly cosy or even tolerant, but it has a rich bond of real love between the two
men who have been abandoned by the mother and who have had to put up with all the
inequalities of their situation. I will
defy anyone not to reach out for their Kleenex watching the final scene that
these men play together.
P.S. The film has an odd provenance by the fact that
it was directed by Chris Wietz, who's resume includes the Oscar Nominated ' About A Boy' in 2002 which he followed with the dreadful 'Golden
Compass', then one of the Twilight Movies, before
this moviewhere he’s really back on form.
Trivia note: Mr Wietz who used to act, and played the cute straight man ‘with a
past’ Chuck in ‘Chuck & Buck’.
★★★★★★★★
★★★★★★★★
