by John P. Meyer

Occasionally we're treated to a film that makes us gush like movie-watching virgins. This would be one of them.

There are two things that particularly surprised me about Trucker:

1) This is James Mottern's first directing effort (he also wrote the script); and

2) It's an incredibly accomplished, tightly contained, remarkably thoughtful, and enormously moving piece of cinema.

It also marks a clear watershed in the acting career of Michelle Monaghan (Gone Baby Gone, Eagle Eye), whose stereotype-shattering lead performance delivers a kick to the emotional cojones. Her fearless warts-and-all portrayal of a long-haul trucker with fiercely independent ways coming to grips with a life-changing reality made me weep like a motherless child. Which is entirely appropriate, given the subject matter.

The movie starts out with a -- um -- bang as Diane Ford (Monaghan) does that cowgirl thang atop the loins of an anonymous man she's sharing a fleabag motel with for the night.

(Well, ALMOST for the night -- she actually disengages, so to speak, and hits the highway before dawn's first light in order to get her contracted cargo further on down the road. Early bird gets the on-time bonus, and all that.)

What's notable about Diane's one-night-stand is the fact that she seems to enjoy it so little -- her laborings in the -- ahem -- driver's seat seem more utilitarian than pleasurable, and it's the guy who's left melancholic and insecure, wondering aloud whether it was good and offering to provide her his email address.

"See you later," she says, before departing.

The driving sequences are designed to give us a feel for the appeal of Diane's free-wheeling life on the road, and we certainly get it: the scenery is beautiful (it was filmed in California, but New Mexico or anywhere else in the American southwest could easily stand in). Furthermore, as an indie trucker you are your own boss -- you keep your own hours -- and you rent your own motel room to share with whomever you please.

Returning home after dropping her trailer at the depot, Diane parks her rig in front of the clapboard bungalow she calls home, scoops up a week's worth of mail from her front porch stoop, and dives face-down onto the bed.

Next morning, the doorbell awakens her: it's Jenny (Joey Lauren Adams), the wife of Diane's estranged husband, and she's got Diane's long-ago abandoned son in tow (Jimmy Bennett, as Peter). Jenny's leaving Peter in Diane's custody whether she likes it or not, given that a) Jenny needs to attend to her mom's out-of-town funeral preparations, and b) Peter's dad Leonard (Benjamin Bratt) is confined to a hospital bed with a debilitating illness.

Reluctantly (and I mean really reluctantly), Diane allows the equally-reluctant 11-year-old Peter into her life; he gives this confrontational stranger of a parental unit a wide berth as he and his backpack navigate past her into the house.

The remainder of the film documents the manner in which Diane is leveraged, kicking and screaming, into responsible adulthood. Her interpersonal skills need help; her mothering ones are nonexistent, and must be learned from scratch.

She calls her estranged son "dude"; he refers to her as "bitch." Neither of them mean these monikers affectionately. The miracle is that Peter eventually begins to recognize in Diane a resiliency and inner strength he can rely on.

(On a road trip, Peter walks across the highway from their motel to purchase a toothbrush and is accosted by a couple of older kids on skateboards; when he returns to the room with a bloodied ear, Diane stalks half naked through the dark and puts the two tough teenagers on their butts before going inside the convenience store to complete the original transaction. After a trip to the emergency room, Peter brushes his teeth.)

Providing a degree of solace for both mom and son is Runner (Nathan Fillion, from Serenity and Waitress), a neighbor to Diane who serves as her drinking buddy when she's in town. (In one marvelous scene, she drives his drunk ass home from the bar and rolls him up the front porch stairs after he collapses, insensate, in the yard.) Though married to another, Runner's love for Diane deepens every time they meet. Furthermore, he acts as a pretty decent surrogate father for Peter, chipping away at the boy's deep-seated insecurity and bottom-scraping self-image.

Diane and Peter's mutual disrespect matures into a kind of genuine caring. After Leonard explains to his son that he won't be leaving the hospital (in one of the most moving deathbed monologues in film), it's decision time for Jenny and Diane. Who will take Peter? Clearly, settled-down, middle-class, soccer-mom Jenny will make the more stable parent. But is that all there is to the arithmetic of guardianship?

12-year-old Jimmy Bennett turns in a remarkably mature performance, engaging our sympathies while maintaining an edge of adolescent surliness and spiteful discontent. As for Monaghan: this is the kind of role an actor can get deep, deep into -- and she does. These characters appear gripped by real confusion and genuine fear of change in the status quo. Along with Fillion's Runner, these people are scared to make the choices they know they need to make -- and we're scared right along with them.

The denouement finds Peter coming to Diane's rescue in a way that makes their decision a fait accompli. It's here where the cathartic weeping commences.

You'll want to sit through the ending credits, both to compose yourself and to make note of the songs included in the great lonely-road soundtrack.

What do you think?