But appearances are rarely what they seem in “Trucker.” It will be the woman who shrugs off the night; the boots and the rest are hers too. Lean and sinewy, she heads for an 18-wheeler in the parking lot out front, slides behind the wheel and kicks the engine into a dull roar. As the road stretches out in front of her, only then does she breathe easy.

This is just the first of many miles we will travel with Michelle Monaghan’s Diane Ford, the sexy tough chick in the fast lane of writer-director James Mottern’s haunting tale of motherhood lost and found.

There are so many wonderfully unconventional things to like about this tiny independent film, Monaghan’s earthy and uncompromising performance chief among them, its depth surprising you at every turn. That the trucker of the title, a take-no-prisoner’s woman barely in her 30s with a taste for whiskey, late nights and rough sex, is a mother is one of the first.

It is almost as much of a surprise to Diane. Her boy, who she hasn’t seen in years, is unexpectedly dropped off one night. His dad, her ex (Benjamin Bratt), is fighting cancer and the stepmom (Joey Lauren Adams) has too much to handle. It will only be temporary, but Diane knows even temporary will upend her life in ways she’s not interested in exploring.

Peter (Jimmy Bennett) is 11, and he is just as reluctant about the arrangement. The back story comes out in the half-sentences of resentment he hurls in her direction. Diane’s the stranger who left him when he was a baby. In a sense, he’s a chip off the block, erecting a wall of anger just like his mother to keep the world from getting too close.

Mottern takes his time with the relationship, letting Diane feel her way toward Peter, who is locked in a deep sulk anyway. Circumstances conspire to force her to take him on the road for one haul with truck stops turning out to be not exactly a safe hangout for a kid.

Diane comes to mothering slowly, reluctantly and in her own way. When some punks at a convenience store across from their motel hassle Peter one night, she storms out in her wife-beater tee, underwear and socks to register a complaint with a few well-placed punches. Mother love, when it comes, turns out to be fierce. As is Monaghan, who creates a kind of visceral force field that flashes in her eyes and tightens the muscles across her back.

There are men everywhere in this world, but they are not the kind a woman can lean on even if that was her way. Runner (Nathan Fillion) is the best friend she’s in love with but won’t sleep with because he’s married. He follows her around like a puppy, fixing things around her house in hopes it will fix their relationship. Bratt’s Len, a terminal case, exists around the edges, a good thing since even in a hospital gown he looks as if he’s just back from a workout at the gym — it’s the one performance that really doesn’t work and an unfortunate distraction.

And then there is 12-year-old Bennett. You may remember him as a young James Kirk in the most recent “Star Trek” or as the best thing about Robert Rodriguez’s dreadful “Shorts.” Bennett just gets stronger with each role he takes on. His disaffected Peter, eyes ducking under a shag of hair, shoulders slumped as if that might help him disappear, is more than willing to tangle with his mother’s moods.

Though this is Mottern’s first feature film, he has an unhurried style that gives the movie and its characters time to breathe in all the right places. He has said he was inspired by movies like “Five Easy Pieces,” low-riding character studies, and you see that influence most when Diane’s on the road. He captures the sense of freedom and beauty of crossing the country in the cocoon of a cab, 18 wheels spinning you forward. There is an attention to detail you see in the dusty, down-market San Diego neighborhood where Diane lives and the quiet order of her house, a counterpoint to the chaos of her life.

Mottern has given us a rare thing, a blue-collar woman with the grit and righteous strength of a Clint Eastwood character. Monaghan has given her heart.

Cast & Crew:

Director: James Mottern

Cast: Michelle Monaghan, Nathan Fillion, Benjamin Bratt, Joey Lauren Adams, Jimmy Bennett

Production: Michelle Monaghan, Celine Rattray, Carina Alves, John Allen, Galt Niederhoffer

Writer: James Mottern

Music: Mychael Danna, Deonna Boman

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The predominantly Spanish-language feature is about as far from Soderbergh’s fizzy celeb-o-rama “Ocean’s Eleven” and its sequels as the filmmaker could get (short of his star-free experiments such as 2005’s “Bubble.”) As an exploration of the rigors of armed struggle, “Che” favors action over psychology. It makes no attempt to explain the soul of a revolutionary by connecting a series of dramatic dots. Neither does it indulge in romance, however inextricably linked that may be to its protagonist; Che is probably the most idealized of political figures, his beret-topped, beautiful visage having taken up permanent residence in the pantheon of pop iconography, fueling vague collegiate notions of leftist martyrdom.

“Che” scraps vague notions for specifics. Its focus is guerrilla warfare. Guevara was a Marxist intellectual, but in the two chapters of his life depicted here — the successful Cuban Revolution of the late 1950s and the failed attempt, nearly a decade later, to orchestrate an uprising in Bolivia — he was, above all, a strategist, tactician and battlefield medic. The film is hardly devoid of incident, but for those who prefer their biopics constructed from aha moments (breakthroughs and breakdowns), it might feel stubbornly leeched of drama or thematic thrust.

For those who balk at the nearly five-hour commitment, including intermission, independent distributor IFC will follow the Academy-Award-qualifying “roadshow” run with the film’s January release as two separate features, simply titled “Che Part One” (originally called “The Argentine”) and “Che Part Two” (“Guerrilla”).

Both halves of the film open with maps that provide mini-lessons in geopolitics, but from there their aesthetic approaches differ (the second section being less visually stylized). Working as cinematographer under his nom-de-camera, Peter Andrews, Soderbergh has shot Part One in widescreen, with an emphasis on meticulously composed tableaux and medium shots. This is not Che in close-up, but Che in interaction. Often he’s not even the central element in the frame; when he disciplines a young rebel soldier, Che’s face is off-screen.

Part One crosscuts scenes of the thrumming jungle, where Che and Fidel Castro (well-cast Mexican actor Demián Bichir) tighten their chokehold on Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship, with dynamic black-and-white re-creations of Che’s 1964 trip to New York. By then he’s Cuba’s minister of industry, striding to the podium at the U.N. General Assembly to denounce imperialism. The surrounding media tour and his guarded mingling with Manhattan’s intelligentsia provide some of the most sublime moments in Del Toro’s understated performance. Witness the priceless exchange backstage at a television studio, when El Comandante smilingly refuses, and then reconsiders, a staffer’s offer of makeup.

Working from the prolific Guevara’s writings, screenwriters Peter Buchman and Benjamin A. van der Veen have not attempted to turn a history lecture into drama or to argue (unnecessarily) against injustice. But they have cleverly used Che’s interview with actress-turned-journalist Lisa Howard — worthy of a biopic herself, and smartly played by Julia Ormond — to articulate the philosophy and pragmatism of the Cuban Revolution, with the translator’s English voice-over enhancing Cuba-set sequences.

If the film’s adamantly public perspective is limiting, it’s also unexpectedly rewarding. None of the supporting characters, including Rodrigo Santoro, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Franka Potente and Lou Diamond Phillips, gets under the viewer’s skin or is meant to. But in their crucial interactions (and credible performances) whole worlds unfold, putting in ever-deepening relief Che’s single-mindedness, charisma, introspection and ruthlessness.

Where Soderbergh miscalculates badly is in his use of point-of-view camera work when Che is injured and, soon after, executed. The self-consciously cinematic choice is thoroughly out of sync with the film’s dispassionate documentary sensibility.

If the second half feels more problematic than the first, that’s because it is, in essence, a countdown to execution. Death clings to the events in Bolivia’s countryside, as the CIA wages its own battle for the campesinos’ hearts and minds. The effect is both enervating and elegiac.

It might be tempting to characterize “Che” as a rebuttal to the more conventional storytelling and humanist exuberance of 2004’s “The Motorcycle Diaries,” from director Walter Salles. But they’re not at odds. Soderbergh has expressed his admiration for that film, and Del Toro effortlessly suggests Guevara’s formative adventures as a bourgeois rebel. The political realities of his legacy can be endlessly debated, but in this flawed work of austere beauty, the logistics of war and the language of revolution give way to something greater, a struggle that may be defined by politics but can’t be contained by it.

Linden is a freelance writer.

Cast & Crew:

Genre: Drama
Starring: Benicio Del Toro, Benjamin Bratt, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Franka Potente, Julia Ormond, Rodrigo Santoro,
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Producer: Benicio Del Toro, Laura Bickford, Steven Soderbergh
Writer: Benjamin A. van der Veen, Peter Buchman