Film Reviews

A Better Life

• Rating:
• Director: Chris Weitz
• Starring:
• Details: US / 98mins (TBC).

Although not credited Luigi Bartolini's novel, which was adapted into the 1948 Italian neo-realist classic The Bicycle Thieves, is more than just a source of inspiration here. A Better Life, from About A Boy and New Moon director Chris Weitz, switches locale and offers up a contemporary take on the story but the plot is essentially the same.
Single father Carlos Galindo (Bichir, The Runway) is an illegal immigrant living in LA with his son, Luis (Julián). The teenaged Luis is getting into trouble in school and is veering towards gang life, but Carlos, who works seven days a week as a landscape gardener to the rich, doesn't have the time to keep a close eye on his son. Encouraged by his boss to buy his truck and start his own business ("if you buy the truck, you buy the American Dream"), Carlos gathers together what money he can and employs Santiago (Linares) to help. However, on the first day of his new job, Santiago steals Carlos' truck and makes off, leaving Carlos to scour the streets of LA.
Despite the recycled story, A Better Life encourages the viewer to ignore the head, which holds film history and cynicism, and watch from the heart, which controls the tear ducts, which will come in handy before the end. Most of the emotional weight is down to Demián Bichir, who was delightful in Ian Power's The Runway, and he pulls the film together with his sterling performance. . It helps when he's playing such a nice character: he offers his son the only bed in the house, he pays a man money for his phone that was stolen and hunts Santiago without hate. Whether Bichir was had a tough life or not is unknown, but, despite hope in those tired eyes, there is a world-weariness to his Carlos
When he isn't on screen, when Weitz explores the life of Luis and his friends, A Better Life's foibles are more obvious. The performances in these scenes are amateurish at best and dialogue is on-the-nose (the gang members talk about gang life in a school documentary way). Maybe the entire movie is like this but Bichir would make anything work on this form.

Review by Gavin Burke