Review: Rucker (The Trucker)

Director: Amy Hesketh

Screenplay: Aaron Drane and Amy Hesketh

Year: 2022

Leif Rucker is a truck driver who spends much of his time driving his truck around the United States. Maggie is a young woman making a documentary about truck drivers and accompanying Rucker in his daily life. However, Rucker has a dark hobby, which Maggie finds interesting, and decides to join him and document this other aspect of his life.

“Rucker (The Trucker)” begins by letting us know that it will work as a documentary focused on Rucker, a truck driver who is very proud of his work. For a good part of the first act, we only see Rucker talking to the camera and explaining what he does and why he loves his job so much. He also mentions on several occasions his ex-wife Darlene, with whom he still is in love.

After a few scenes, the person behind the camera moves to the front of the lens. Maggie is a young woman interested in the life of truckers, and Rucker is delighted to be able to give her every detail of his trade. Once the interactions of both begin in front of the camera, the film's problems become evident.

For starters, the performances aren't all bad, especially considering this is a tight-budget movie, but neither actor has the charisma to carry the development. Consequently, and combined with a bland and pointless script, the scenes are insufferably long and lead nowhere. To make matters worse, the plot is structured in a very confusing way, as if Aaron Drane and Amy Hesketh (“Fear Clinic”), who write the script, did not know where they wanted to take the story. 

For example, once the face of the person behind the camera is revealed, the story moves in a way that leads us to think there is some kind of attraction between Rucker and Maggie. However, as the plot unfolds, a connection between the two is revealed, making this theme of their attraction awkward and off the mark.

The horror aspect is also not interesting enough to captivate the audience. Apart from his job, Rucker has another hobby, which is killing women who remind him of his ex-wife, an activity that catches Maggie's attention and who decides to play along. The slasher aspect of this plot element is completely lost by the insignificance and monotony of the deaths. Even the appearance of Corey Taylor, lead singer of the heavy metal bands Slipknot and Stone Sour, is irrelevant, flavorless, and unnecessary.

“Rucker (The Trucker)” does not have a clear path and a well-defined idea, which ends up in a monotonous and boring path. Not only is the movie boring, but its script is extremely confusing, and it seems like the creators really didn't know where they were going with their story. Or maybe it's a well-structured script, and it's so boring that I've become disconnected from what it's trying to show and lost details along the way? It doesn’t matter; neither scenario helps the film.