A Better Life – review

Possibly director Chris Weitz is adhering to the "one for the studio, one for me" rule of film-making. He follows Twilight: New Moon with this sincere, quietly disarming drama about the shadow lives of America's illegal, undocumented workers. It's a father and son tale with echoes of Bicycle Thieves (and to a lesser extent his own About a Boy) in which a Mexican single dad's truck is stolen in LA. At times Weitz skates to within a hair's breadth of a run-of-the-mill hard luck story; yet the script lurches off-convention during the theft, which comes after we've been lulled into a moment of whistling calm. Mexican star Demian Bichir carries it all with a measured performance of considerable emotion as the dad, clenched by so many years holding his breath, waiting for the knock at the door.