Big Rig (2007)

I had high hopes for this based on the description and the reviews of others. I was, needless to say based on my headline, disappointed completely. The movie follows way too many people, very little of it is actually about big rigs or the life of a truck driver, much of it was too political (seemed mostly like fairly uninformed political discussion), and too much of it merely solidified the stereotypes of truckers that the film seemed to want to get away from. On top of all that, none of it was very interesting.The main problem is the film lacks a solid narrative foundation. The editing is horrendous, jumps all around the country, often leaving you with no idea where we're off to next or if there's any goal in mind. They'd introduce a character, spend 2 mins with him then suddenly leave and never bring the guy back. One guy's entire time on camera was basically him sitting in his broken down truck, and only after nearly 2 hours do we see what on earth happened- yet, even here, we don't get a true sense of what a trucker would do in such a circumstance. The MTV style editing with a millisecond of a random object was distracting as well. It seems like the director didn't get enough coverage for any of the scenes- why else leave in all the annoying zoom in shots where he tried, often in vain, to get an object in focus- an object that had no bearing on the story itself? That took away from the film's aesthetic, and with the shabby narrative, this movie needed all it could get in that dept.Just generally a disappointing effort throughout. I enjoyed a couple of the stories, and we did get small glimpses into the lives of truck drivers, but nowhere near enough to justify 100+ mins. And let's even discuss in too much detail the endless montages of random road signs and roadway accompanied by music that was a good 3 times louder than any of the dialogue- I had to turn the volume up and down, up and down the entire time. Interesting idea, tragically flawed result.

This is a story about the people that keep this country moving by driving 18-Wheelers. The documentary started out interviewing a truck driver at a truck stop who said that if for a single week, trucks stopped running, that it would turn the country upside down. As soon as the guy behind this man heard him, he turned around and said that it would only take three days to cause panic at grocery stores around the country, because almost everything that we buy arrives at the stores from 18-Wheelers.Doug Pray is the director of this film. In order to produce Big Rig, he rode across 45 state lines in multiple tractor trailers. He also has made Hype! a documentary film about the emergence of the rock scene in Seattle. Another movie, Scratch is about the hip hop world and specifically the DJs that spin in the clubs. He also has two other movies about graffiti artists and surfers. On Pray's website he says that he likes to uncover the story of people that he sees as underdogs or those that people in society misunderstand. Pray also believes the people he films have many things in common. For example, he says that both surfers and DJs understand how to flow with things, even though their careers are totally different.The idea behind Big Rig is to expose the truck drivers that run our country. These people are often taken for granted because society forgets how important they are. There was one person in particularly that caught my attention, he was a man who only had one arm but was still able to drive a truck. He was a very inspiring person because he was almost killed in an accident involving heavy machinery. After that he decided that he wanted to become a truck driver so that he could see the country and more important that than that, he loves his job, which is something that not everyone experiences. There was another story about a man who was in an accident in his truck. He was going down a hill and he lost his brakes, so he had to veer off the side of the road. When he arrived at the hospital and the police officer asked him if he was wearing his seat belt the man responded, Yes. However, the officer responded that that was impossible because the steering column had came into the cab during the accident and if he was wearing it then he would be decapitated. When the nurse examined him, sure enough he was in fact wearing his seat belt. It's the little miracles like this that made him strive to achieve at what he does and he didn't let his accident scare him out of driving a truck or doing what he loves.The majority of this film was edited in interview format. I think this is because he is trying to get people to tell about their lives on the road and that really would have been able to be conveyed unless he got them to talk about their life. Another major part of this film was the music that was included. The band used was Buck 65. All the music that was played in the film was specifically composed for the purpose of being in this documentary. Buck 65's music is based around country music, which is important because truckers are seen as the last of the cowboys.Overall, I would suggest watching this documentary because I believe that it will give people a new found respect for those who drive 18-Wheelers because their lives are harder than we could ever imagine.

This movie is a great concept and brings us some great stories and personalities. It's educational and fun to ride with the truckers featured here. Unfortunately, the filmmaker doesn't seem to trust them to make an exciting film by themselves, and so there is near-schizophrenic cutting throughout (the average shot is probably about 3 seconds) and an overpowering amount of music to accompany every moment. It's also shot like an extended episode of Road Rules, with countless montages of road signs and scenery backed by aforementioned beat-heavy rock. I think the movie would actually be half as long if you took out these interludes. Which is a shame, because based on the amount of road footage the film includes, the filmmakers must have spent quite awhile on the road, and have got to have many more interview reels with truckers than they put in the final version. Since the filmmaker himself doesn't have much to say beyond the fact that truckers are good people and trucks are important, it's too bad that he didn't let the truckers say more themselves.

Big Rig screened this week at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX where it was very well-received. Big Rig is an entertaining and very personnel look at truckers that attempts to counter the many negative stereotypes that Americans have about truckers. The film acts to humanize this group that most Americans know little about. The cinematography of the American landscape as viewed from trucks driving across America is quite beautiful. This is backed up by an entertaining soundtrack. The truckers interviewed are often quirky characters who come off as much smarter and reflective than most of us would expect.In the film, we see a great variety of truckers of different backgrounds, races, personalities, ages, and politics. The film also includes several female truckers and talks about the difficulties that they face in a male-dominated world. The focus is mostly on who the truckers are, why they do what they do, and the difficulties that they face (rising gas prices, time away from their families, government regulation, etc.). The film also tries to show us how crucial and under-appreciated the role of trucking is in our national economy.The only real weakness is that by only telling the story entirely from the truckers' perspective, they provide a portrait that is almost entirely sympathetic and essentially uncritical. They never speak to any consumer advocates or critics of trucking industry, for example. They don't discuss many of the problems that truckers cause for the roads, other motorists, or the environment. They don't really explore much about trucking industry and its faults. The view is more personal and in this case that's mostly a positive. The film is charming and scenic view of an under-appreciated American subculture that is in many ways the unseen backbone of much of the American economy.