Pun Salad

Netflix insisted I would love this movie! I had my doubts, but it wasn't bad at all.

It's the story of Carlos, an illegal Mexican immigrant eking out a tough living assisting in a gardening business in L.A. Carlos's wife has long since split, leaving him with a now-teenage son, Luis. Family life is teetering on the edge of dysfunction: Carlos gets home late, exhausted, gets up the next morning to do it all again; he's only got time for a few words to Luis. Luis is increasingly surly; worse, his girlfriend is in a family full of gang members, and it's widely expected that Luis will go that way too.

One hope: Carlos's boss is retiring, and wants to sell his truck to Carlos. This would enable Carlos to—just perhaps—start climbing up the ladder from the lower class.

Things don't go well, of course.

Demián Bichir, playing Carlos, got a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance here. I'm not sure this wasn't a PC "diversity" nod by the Academy voters, but he does a fine job. PJ Media's Roger L. Simon is credited for the story, so that's a big plus. A number of commenters at IMDB found this to be propaganda on the side of immigration reform, amnesty, open borders, etc. Eh, I don't think so; the movie never slides into that kind of tendentiousness. Instead, it's a decently powerful story of a guy striving against the odds for himself and his kid. You don't have to draw any deeper political lessons from that unless you want to.