‘A Better Life’ puts face on illegal immigration

It's dangerous to model your movie on an all-time classic.

Unless, of course, you're fairly certain most of your audience has never seen it.

So the makers of "A Better Life" can relax, secure in the knowledge that few of their viewers have seen director Vittorio De Sica's 1948 Italian neorealist landmark "The Bicycle Thief" (also known as "Bicycle Thieves").

This viewer has, however. And if "A Better Life" inspires even one person to see "Bicycle Thief" -- a movie that, once seen, remains utterly unforgettable -- it will have performed a valuable public service.

Besides, "A Better Life" isn't the worst rip-off in cinematic history.

With its heartfelt, homespun approach, "A Better Life" tries to, as they say, put a face on the seemingly endless debate over illegal immigration.

And while the story it spins is far too pat and predictable for its own good, at least "A Better Life" focuses on people, and places, we don't often see at the movies these days.

In Tom Hanks' current "Larry Crowne," for example, the title character loses his job and can't afford to pay the mortgage on his suburban home. Yet there's never a sense that he's teetering on the edge of a precipice and could plunge to disaster with one misstep.

That's hardly the case for "A Better Life's" embattled protagonist, Carlos Galindo ("Weeds' " Demian Bichir ) -- who, perhaps not coincidentally, shares a name with a magistrate on the old "Zorro" TV show.

Part of the vast army of manual laborers who tend the yards, clean the houses, cook the meals and mind the children of affluent Southern Californians, this Carlos came to L.A. six years ago and works as a gardener's helper.

In his tiny East L.A. abode, he sleeps on the couch -- so his 14-year-old son, Luis (an engagingly sullen Jose Julian), can get a good night's sleep and be ready for school.

Not that Luis, who's as thoroughly Americanized as his father is old-school, seems particularly motivated. So far, he's managed to stay out of the gang culture that surrounds him -- barely. But with a pugnacious girlfriend (Chelsea Rendon) whose gangbanger brothers offer an easy, seemingly inviting alternative to his father's ceaseless hard work, his resolve is wavering.

Little wonder Carlos is desperate to get them out of the barrio and somewhere where the schools are better and the streets are safer.

The dedicated dad thinks he's found his ticket to "A Better Life" when his genial boss, Blasco (Joaquin Cosio ), announces he's returning to Mexico, offering to sell Carlos his truck and gardening equipment. So Carlos reluctantly borrows enough money from his sister (Dolores Heredia ) to buy the truck and become his own boss.

Naturally, Carlos has no driver's license, so if he's ever stopped for a traffic violation, immigration authorities will send him back to Mexico.

And if he ever becomes the victim of a crime -- a development all "Bicycle Thief" fans know, and all "Better Life" audiences will come to realize, is inevitable -- Carlos must handle the trouble himself, because he can never, ever go to the police for help.

So Luis joins Carlos on an extended odyssey for the person threatening their chance for "A Better Life." At least it's a good opportunity for father-son bonding.

Their search leads from the barrios of East L.A. to the 'hood in South Central L.A., from the street corners where illegals hope to find work to the restaurant kitchens where they wash dishes -- and even to the rodeo grounds where Mexican transplants gather to relive the traditions of their native land.

Even those who, like Carlos, consider L.A. their home and have no desire to return to Mexico.

At their best, these sequences have a relaxed, semidocumentary feel that ably reflects the rhythms and routines of workaday life in split-personality Southern California. (The near-omnipresence of radio fixture Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo adds to the persuasive atmosphere.)

If only "A Better Life" -- and its makers -- didn't try so hard to play it safe.

Screenwriter Eric Eason ("Manito"), working from a story by Roger L. Simon ("Enemies: A Love Story"), never takes the script anywhere except the obvious; what you think will happen turns out to be, dismayingly and exactly, what does happen, time and again.

Even when the movie introduces potential complexities, such as Luis' trigger temper, it shies away from fully exploring them.

Instead, the focus remains squarely on Carlos' dignified decency despite multiple reversals of fortune.

True to his roots, director Chris Weitz ("About a Boy," "Twilight: New Moon") -- the grandson of Mexican actress Lupita Tovar -- tries mightily to provide a well-rounded picture of Latino life.

As often as not, however, he allows the story's predictable melodrama to overwhelm more insightful observations.

That might be a bigger problem if "A Better Life" didn't have such a sympathetic central character -- and an actor more than capable of bringing him to life.

Despite times when Carlos seems little more than a plaster saint, Bichir (who portrayed Fidel Castro in Steven Soderbergh's epic "Che") humanizes him, combining a quiet, wary intensity with a palpable goodness that at first seems a bit difficult to believe -- and, at last, proves impossible to resist.

Contact movie critic Carol Cling at ccling@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0272.