I’m no film critic by any stretch of the imagination that I know. As I know also when and why I like or dislike a movie. For example, I went to see Bad Teacher with Cameron Diaz and I have to say I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie where I couldn’t find one single redeeming feature. This one in my mind offers the viewer nothing, not in terms of plot, hilarity, morals, aesthetics (unless you count Cameron washing a car in very small clothes a redeeming feature, then this is your movie).
Then I saw Horrible Bosses and with its crude and adult humor, I was able to enjoy more. Nowadays you expect every actor to have some talent and chops and the ones in Horrible Bosses do not disappoint.
Of course you have movies like A Better Life and if you go see it you more or less have an idea of what to expect: a story about disenfranchised and marginalized people that can’t seem to find a place where they can be allowed to have a better life (not even their country).
So we start with an undocumented Mexican, Carlos Galindo who works in an underground economy doing yard work. His wife left him with a small son, Luis, because she wasn’t satisfied with what he could provide for her.
Now Luis is 14 and moody as a bona fide teenager, and it seemed to me when I saw his eyes dart around, that he was posing those eternal and unanswerable questions of “Who am I?” “Why am I here”, “Is there any meaning to my life?” School is just a way of passing time and being exposed to the reality of gang activity in the hood. There are a couple of instances when you know Luis has to weigh this possibility for his own life, and you silently cheer him on to say no, unlike his friend who we lose as he goes through some form of violent gang initiation.
The plot revolves around a truck Carlos buys from the guy who employs him to do yard work. This used pickup truck is considered by Carlos as a way out of the painful small and inadequate home he shares with his son, the dangerous school Luis attends and their neighborhood.
After the truck is stolen by a pathetic man whose situation seems to be far worse, father and son are stopped by the police.
Yes, I cried but it’s hard not to when the story toys with the things you value the most: common decency, family, tradition, culture, education and the desire to work.
Luis is at the door of manhood. He was born in California, but his life seems pretty much decided for him: a gang or, as his friend tells him, end up doing yards like his dad.
As an American, Luis seems to have a disdain for the Spanish language, the Mexican culture and all things that are not of the white world, but his dad keeps pulling him into the intimacy of his love, reminding him of his origin and his beginning.
It’s this that I think offers a door of redemption for the teenager: somehow in his genes he carries the values of his dad. He has observed the quiet man day in and day out as he toils with his tools, as he takes care of his small yard, of how beaten up he is by life and how he never desists to keep his courage and his hope. Luis carries this knowledge in his blood and when it comes time to decide his path, there will be no gang strong enough to make him give that identity up.
Well, at least that is my take and my prayer for when life starts getting tough on my daughter.
Demián Bichir is an actor I didn’t know. I loved how he created the hard-working, decent Carlos Galindo and the moral choices he unknowingly teaches his son in the process of interacting with the youth: like paying a guy because “he kept his word, I’ll keep mine,” of paying it forward and hiring a guy because he had shared his food with him. Finally when the father breaks down and tells Luis that he had him to love him and to worry about him, and to make sure he made something with his life. He tells him what I imagine is what we all parents think at some point in our life: That that is when we will feel worthy.
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