Director Chris Weitz is known for his controversial work ethic films that often involve family struggle – Good Company, About a Boy, etc. With this new one – A Better Life – there’s little exception. This time Weitz tackles an illegal Mexican immigrant, Carlos (Demian Bichir) who must keep his head down emotionally and legally because all he wants is a better life for his son, Luis (Jose Julian). And if the law finds out who he is, they’ll be deported. As a Malibu Beach gardener, he cleans up yards for the rich and famous, while his son, Luis, watches “Cribs’ on television longing for an easy way out. Could joining an L A gang be his son’s answer? Every night Carlos comes home, crashes on the couch, wakes to an alarm and then it starts all over. His wife, the mother of Luis, fled long ago for a better world, and so Carlos – a sort of Jesus of immigrant workers – uses his work ethic as example to his child.
As with any of these American dream movies we find ourselves fascinated to be on the inside of their worlds trying to understand what makes these caught-in-the-cracks characters tick. And once in that crack, can we as an audience believe that what they feel forced to do makes sense to us. Would we do it, too? In this case, the plot follows through on all counts.
We might find Carlos a coward, but when he lives and breathes every cent to buy a used truck that will allow him to work, suddenly this man whose blessed-by-a-hanging-medal-Madonna-on-the-dashboard, slowly rises to a great performance. You’ll recognize the actor who gives a boil over Oscar performance from the hit “Weeds.” The one huge lesson you take away from this film is that if you continue to instill solid and honest values upon your children they eventually pay off. The other lesson you take away in its teary ending… is that no matter how creatively the filmmaker paints the political canvas of this film, the bottom line is can we/should we feel badly for a man who shoudln’t have crossed the border in the first place? Three and a half tiaras