Rucker – Film Review

For the past thirty years, Rucker (Bobby C. King) the trucker has devoted his life to travelling the road as a serial killer. When Maggie (Cheyenna Lee) makes Rucker the subject of her documentary, their journey takes a dangerous detour as he recruits her to complete his masterpiece.

Rucker is one of those movies where, while you’re watching it, you can tell that the director and screenwriter had no idea what tone they wanted to fully commit to, so instead of figuring it out behind the scenes, they simply injected a little bit of everything into it, rendering it a sloppy and tonally inconsistent mess of a film. There are several times when it seems as though Amy Hesketh‘s film wants to be a dark comedy, there are times when it feels like it wants to go full-on with its horror themes, and there are some moments where it seems to want to be a straight-up parody of slashers.

What this film desperately needed was a better scriptwriter to figure out exactly the kind of tone the film should have been, because watching Rucker is honestly headache-inducing. Not only is the film visually ugly to look at (seriously, the whole film has a gross yellowish tint to it), but it’s also one that will frustrate you to no end. As silly and bizarre as the concept sounds, it could have been something truly fun and entertaining with the right creative team. Amy Hesketh and Aaron Drane must have had some clashing ideas when it came to the script.

If nothing else, this movie should have made its protagonist, Rucker, a deeply interesting character. I should have wanted to see him in the film but I just didn’t care in the long run. The character of Rucker kind of reminds me of Mark Duplass‘s character in Creep. He’s a guy that is unbelievably unsettling to watch and you get the feeling that he’s probably a terrible person, but you still manage to feel sympathy for him thanks to a wonderfully complex script from Patrick Brice – one that isn’t so black-and-white. As a character, all Rucker is, is just a crazy guy that likes to kill people. That’s it? It’s kind of annoying.

But I have to give credit where credit is due and say that Bobby C. King delivers one heck of a performance here as the title character. Even though he doesn’t get nearly as much character development as he should, King definitely goes all out for this role, and watching him act and have the time of his life was honestly the only truly terrific thing about the entire film. Other than King’s performance, there really isn’t anything to recommend about Rucker. It’s tonally confusing, features a bland script, and wastes its cast of incredibly talented actors.