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 he 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.
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 movie where 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’.
