"A Better Life" is a curious picture in every way: curious about the undocumented residents of Los Angeles and, less helpfully, curious in its mixture of sincerity and slick manipulation. Without giving the game away entirely, this story of a Mexican-born gardener, his at-risk teenage son and a stolen truck culminates in a scene in which the excellent leading actor, Demian Bichir — Esteban on TV's "Weeds," Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh's "Che," a veteran of dozens of Spanish-language film and theater projects — confronts his son, Luis, played by Jose Julian. Playing a profoundly decent man pushed to the limit, Bichir taps everything he has as an actor here, which is everything the character and the film require and more. The best of the scene transcends words, and language; the best of it is, in fact, nonverbal.
I wonder if the audience will feel more honest emotion thanks to Bichir's tears than in all the script's step-by-step, on-the-nose and troublingly schematic qualities. Such qualities may have helped get "A Better Life" out of the development stage … but at a price. Raising his son on his own, Bichir's Carlos puts one foot in front of the other each day, trimming Malibu hedges and the palm trees of the well-to-do for a friend who has saved up enough money to head back home. Carlos wants none of that: He lives, however uneasily, to give his combustible, gang-prone son a leg up in America.
With a loan from his sister (Dolores Heredia), Carlos bets everything on the purchase of his boss's gardening truck and tools. It's more than a truck, Carlos is told; it's a piece of "the American dream." "A Better Life" — which would've been better off without thesis lines like that — relays the story of how the truck becomes stolen property and why, and what, comes after its recovery. As Carlos and Luis hunt down their prey, the script by Eric Eason, based on an earlier draft by Roger L. Simon, nudges these two toward greater understanding, though also at a price.
Directed by Chris Weitz with a stately and deliberate sense of craft, the film owes a lot to Vittorio De Sica's post-World War II neorealist classic "Bicycle Thieves." It is not alone; so does the forthcoming Dardenne brothers' drama "The Kid With a Bike." Any movie whose plot concerns impoverished human beings, a stolen set of wheels and a life-or-death scenario owes something to De Sica. It's inevitable.
The limitations here have to do with style, not theme. "A Better Life" feels more Hollywood than East LA; each time Weitz and his cinematographer, Javier Aguirresarobe, push their camera slowly toward a character's face, editorializing grief or nobility, it's another tiny falsification in their tale. Similarly, the score by Alexandre Desplat treats culturally specific instrumentation and melody to swank London Symphony Orchestra arrangements, and you're left thinking: Why the first-class trappings? Aren't they too much for this story?
This country retells so many millions of immigration stories each day, yet so few make their way to the screen. "A Better Life" is best seen (and worth seeing) as a showcase for Bichir, who turns a symbol of survival into a dimensional human being. He proves how compelling an actor can be when he trusts each moment to reveal itself. I wish the screenplay operated on the same sort of trust.
"A Better Life"
Grade: 2 1/2 out of 4 stars
Genres: Drama
Running Time:98 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
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