SmugKitZine Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Quiet Muffin This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

leazeram 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.

tookie_38 I have to admit that I was very impressed with the film. While I wasn't too concerned about the actual film making aspect of it, I was paying close attention to the reality and detail of what the film was presenting to the viewers (after all it was a documentary). The subject matter that was presented was great, and the choice of drivers in the film was very diverse and a very real portal to some of the characters one would meet at any truck stop, anywhere, on any day in the US.The film may be scattered somewhat jumping from driver to driver, and it never really gives an idea of what happens or where the people end up at the end of the film. It's more of a snapshot of the daily life of the truck driver, and relies more on stories about how they got to that point in their lives and includes some road stories from the past. It barely touches the surface of the actual daily struggles of a truck driver, but it's done in a nice neutral way that doesn't try to sway the viewer. Some drivers are likable, some are not. The situation throughout the film "is what it is".If you've ever been curious about who those drivers are in those big trucks sharing the road with you, this movie is a very good place to start and get an idea.

Susan Jackson I was interested in the title and description of Big Rig while attending the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, TX. However, I was eager to get the heck out of the seats as soon as Big Rig ended. Big Rig is comprised of several "big rig" drivers who set out to deliver goods driven across the United States. The characters are all wonderful people, however the filmmakers never dug deep into the complexity of them as people. Instead, the story meanders as much as the maps in the film are meant to guide, but never do. At most, we get lost. We - the audience - end up going nowhere and, like the direction of the storytelling, end up somewhere but without direction, location, or plot. Why are we here? Where are we? How did we get here? The storytelling is sloppy and the directors' intent on "humanizing" a group of people who they regard as "overlooked" and "invisible" comes across as unconsciously and irritatingly condescending. The problem here here lies in the perspective of the directors instead of the truck drivers. The directors bring their own naive assumptions about truckers forward and then simply edit the film to confirm those assumptions. Overall, the story lacks any tension, the film is entirely too long (should have been a 15 min sketch), the big question of "So what" is never answered, and the entire film is one piece of see-through propaganda that does nothing to further "enlighten" (as the directors claim) the outside world about big riggers.

JustCuriosity 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.