Film Review: 'Trucker' -- GRADE: B+

'Trucker' is full of surprising turns

Betsy Sharkey / Los Angeles Times

We see the boots first, then the leather cigarette case, the silver lighter -- all very worn, very male -- in the seedy motel room where sounds of sex, raw and desperate, fill the air.

But appearances are rarely what they seem in "Trucker." There are so many wonderfully unconventional things to like about this tiny independent film that the trucker of the title, a take-no-prisoner's woman barely in her 30s with a taste for whiskey, late nights and rough sex, is a mother is one of the first surprises.

Lean and sinewy, she heads for an 18-wheeler and kicks the engine into a dull roar. As the road stretches out in front of her, only then does she breathe easy.

This is just the first of many miles we will travel with Michelle Monaghan's Diane Ford, the sexy tough chick in the fast lane of writer-director James Mottern's haunting tale of motherhood lost and found.

It is almost as much of a surprise to Diane. Her boy, whom she hasn't seen in years, unexpectedly is dropped off one night. His dad, her ex (Benjamin Bratt), is fighting cancer and the stepmom (Joey Lauren Adams) has too much to handle. The custody will be temporary, but Diane knows even temporary will upend her life in ways she's not interested in exploring. Peter (Jimmy Bennett) is 11 and he is just as reluctant about the arrangement.

Mother love, when it comes, turns out to be fierce. Monaghan creates a kind of visceral force field that flashes in her eyes and tightens the muscles across her back. And then there is 12-year-old Bennett ("Star Trek," "Shorts") whose disaffected Peter, eyes ducking under a shag of hair, shoulders slumped as if that might help him disappear, is more than willing to tangle with his mother's moods.

Mottern has given us a rare thing, a blue-collar woman with the grit and righteous strength of a Clint Eastwood character. Monaghan has given her heart.