james mottern Tagged Articles at Cinematical

I was completely honest with actress Michelle Monaghan yesterday when I told her, right at the beginning of a one-on-one interview, that I'd been waiting a long time to watch her come alive in a role. In her relatively short career, Monaghan has already racked up quite the resume -- appearing in films like Mission Impossible III, Gone Baby Gone, The Bourne Supremacy, The Heartbreak Kid and the soon-to-be-released Made of Honor. She's got a great, girl-next-door quality about her, but is she memorable? The good news here is that Monaghan finally delivered the sort of performance I've known was trapped somewhere inside her, hidden behind a variety of big, flashy Hollywood films. Make no mistake, this is her film. She owns it. But is that enough to convince you to see it?

In Trucker, she plays Diane, a female truck driver with one helluva edge -- not to mention a knack for drinking lots of hard liquor and taking part in more than a few unhealthy one-night-stands. She's a selfish woman with not many friends; she knows just what she needs to keep on truckin', and she knows just how to get it. Thing is, you'll never see her give anything back. These personality traits become a problem when Diane's 11-year-old estranged son (Jimmy Bennett) shows up on her doorstep one day -- brought by his soon-to-be stepmother (Joey Lauren Adams) when colon cancer forces the kid's dad (Benjamin Bratt) into the hospital. These two, mother and son, don't care for one another, nor are they interested in getting better acquainted. He needs a place to crash for three weeks, and she needs to find a way to let that happen.

We already know that Michelle Monaghan is making a name for herself, having nabbed roles in big films like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, North Country and Mission: Impossible III, plus upcoming flicks such as Patrick Dempsey's Made of Honor. On the flip side, there's Mr. Nathan Fillion, who has found success in pizza places and space, but can't seem to break beyond them into the stardom he deserves. (If you agree, make sure to check out Scott's fan rant about Fillion failing to catch a break.) But now, I ask: could truckers give him his big break?

According to Variety, production has just started on the Plum Pictures film Trucker, a new independently-financed drama starring Monaghan, Fillion, Benjamin Bratt, Joey Lauren Adams and Jimmy Bennett. James Mottern, who wrote the script, will make his directorial debut with the movie. In a nice change of pace, the trucker is being played by Michelle herself, and her character leads "a careless life with no responsibility until she has to take in her estranged 11-year-old son (Bennett) after his father (Bratt) is hospitalized." The actress is so into this role that she not only signed on before they got financing, but she also became a licensed tractor-trailer driver. Either this is a meaty role, or she's been itching to entertain her inner trucker. There is no word who Fillion will play, but hopefully it will be something to give the man some long-deserved recognition.