Review of A Better Life (2011) by Mike M — 27 Jul 2011

Allows itself time and space to observe the Latino community's faces and customs; the search for the truck is halted for a trip to the charro, a ritualised equestrian spectacle, because Weitz loves the colour and bustle there - but also because he recognises the event once formed an integral part of his characters' lives.

Compared to the compromised "The Golden Compass" in particular, "A Better Life" feels all round better managed. Eric Eason's three-act screenplay is pleasingly classical, and Weitz has movie intelligence enough to make his set-pieces count: a sequence in which father and son try to liberate the truck from a garage is as suspenseful as anything now showing.

More encouraging yet is the director's apparent rediscovery of actors: Bichir, so imposing as Castro in Soderbergh's "Che", huddles under his baseball cap, making himself as nondescript as Carlos needs to be, and Julian nails Luis's ghetto-headedness, a combustible mix of frustration and flat-out tiredness at the grunt work he's obliged to put in to survive.

The generous budget would appear to preclude the harder edges of a "Sin Nombre" or "Maria Full of Grace", rather more visceral, independent takes on the migrant experience; a coda, finding Carlos on the move again, is hardly triumphant, but suggests someone along the line was pressing for a redemption to go with their family-friendly certificate.

Yet the whole is unusually, commendably sincere about its characters, and the tale it tells. Modest as "A Better Life" may be in scope, it commits wholeheartedly to achieving the goal of the socially conscious cinema: to make visible the previously unseen.