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A Better Life: movie review

鈥楢 Better life鈥� puts a human face on the struggle of illegal immigrants with the story of a Mexican father trying to raise his wayward son.

With all the heated and sometimes hateful controversy surrounding the issue of illegal immigration in the United States, it鈥檚 depressingly easy to lose sight of the fact that illegal aliens are people, not statistics. They are both omnipresent and, especially if one chooses not to look, invisible, and no more so than in southern California, the setting for Chris Weitz鈥檚 鈥淎 Better Life,鈥� about a single father who exists under the radar and dreams the American dream.

Very few American 鈥╩ovies have dealt with the experience of illegals 鈥� 鈥淓l Norte鈥� (the best of them), 鈥淭he Border,鈥� and 鈥淭he Visitor鈥� are probably the best known. As a result, much of 鈥淎 Better Life鈥� has a built-in fascination that carries us through its rough spots. With a modicum of melodrama, it focuses on a world that is relatively new to movies. Several scenes set in the barrios of East Los Angeles, or at a visiting Mexican rodeo, have an admirable, semidocumentary realism. Eric Eason鈥檚 script is sometimes unduly contrived and derivative, but we are always aware that something larger is being played out.

Carlos (Demi谩n Bichir), who works as a gardener鈥檚 helper, lives with his 14-year-old son Luis (Jos茅 Juli谩n) in a rundown apartment in East L.A. He sleeps on the couch so that Luis can have a comfortable bed and be fresh for school, even though Luis, a good student when he wants to be, often skips classes to hang out with his other truant friends.

When Blasco (the wonderful Joaqu铆n Cosio), who owns the lawn business, decides to go back to Mexico, he offers to sell Carlos his truck and equipment. Since Carlos has no driver鈥檚 license 鈥� and because a routine traffic violation could result in deportation for him 鈥� he is reluctant at first. Eventually he takes up his sister鈥檚 generous offer of a loan and buys the truck. A new world opens up to him, until, on his first day 鈥� well, if you鈥檝e ever seen the great De Sica neorealist masterpiece 鈥淏icycle Thieves,鈥� you鈥檒l have no trouble figuring out what comes next.

The resemblance to De Sica鈥檚 film is a bit closer than an homage, if something less than a rip-off. Still, it鈥檚 a functional story device, even though the movie we keep being reminded of is one of the greatest ever made, while 鈥淎 Better Life鈥� is just solidly OK. As Carlos and Luis comb the barrio and South Central L.A. in search of the stolen truck, they slowly bond. Or rather, Luis bonds with his father. Carlos鈥檚 love for his son is never in doubt. His prime motivation for buying the truck and risking 鈥╡verything was simple: He wants to move his son into a better neighborhood and away from the gangs the boy has so far tenuously resisted.

The film captures the ways in which Luis, who is Americanized, rejects his father鈥檚 old-school ways. This rejection would probably have happened even without the complication of illegal immigration; it鈥檚 a staple of generational and adolescent conflict. But because Bichir is such a quietly forceful presence, Carlos is continually favored by the camera in his encounters with Luis, who displays a violent streak that the film never comes to terms with. The father-son emotional trajectory is too easily plotted 鈥� we can see where things are headed early on 鈥� and yet it still hits home.

I wish 鈥淎 Better Life鈥� had moved further away from its comfort zone. If Carlos wasn鈥檛 so reliably salt of the earth, if Luis had shown himself to be more explosively disturbed, the film would have resembled less a recruitment poster for tolerance. But there are sequences here, like the ones involving men massing for work on street corners, or working the night shift washing dishes, that highlight a closed-off society too often neglected in the movies 鈥� not to mention in real life. Grade: B (Rated PG-13 for some violence, language, and brief drug use.)