Lifetime
Lifetime and executive producer Garcelle Beauvais return to the ‘Black Girl Missing’ franchise with a third film titled Taken at a Truck Stop: A Black Girl Missing Movie, which is a harrowing kidnapping tale but its use of a teen girl on the autistic spectrum as a plot point may be questionable.
The movie stars Beauvais as trucker Kai, working for the family business now run by her little sister Madison. Kai has made what she thinks is her last run, ready to retire from a life on the road and enjoy her own life. First thing on the agenda is a trip to San Francisco with her niece LaToya, or Toy as she is called by her family, for her eighteenth birthday. Mad, however, has a new proposition for Kai as an offer has come in from a company looking to do business with a family-run operation for a job that would take her to Texas at $4.00 a mile, which apparently is big money. Wanting to help her sister, Kai has to break the news to Toy that she can’t go to San Francisco, but Toy doesn’t care, she just wants to get away and spend time with her aunt so they both have to convince Mad to let her go. Because Toy is on the spectrum, she has no filter as to how she asks her mother to let her go, repeating everything Kai said to her in confidence. Awkward. But her mother relents and Kai assures her that she and Toy will be fine. As they hit the road, Kai notices Toy is always texting someone, and she reveals its just a boy she’s been talking to named Eric. But this Eric has also been sending Toy gifts which does not sit well with Kai because she’s concerned that her niece has been promising the boy things in exchange for the gifts. Toy assures her she did not ask for anything, but Kai warns her to be careful. Kai also notices a black car has been following them since they left, and while at a truck stop she hears Toy screaming and sees the car. She sees a man accosting Toy and starts beating him with her tire thumper until another trucker intervenes. Turns out he is the guy she only knows from their CB radio chats as Clutch Doctor. He stops her from hurting the guy and getting them into legal trouble, but when she tells him about the black car it is nowhere to be seen.
Lifetime
Kai and Toy get back on the road, but at another stop late one night Toy is hungry and makes her way to the truck stop diner. While she’s eating, the boy she’s been texting shows up out of the blue with a convoluted story that he just happened to be in the same place she was. He finally admits that he wanted to surprise her for her birthday and she tries to explain to him that she’s not good at interacting with other people and the situation is so uncomfortable that she leaves when the waitress senses something is not right. But as she runs out, Eric follows, grabs her and dumps her in the trunk of his car. As he speeds away, Toy still has her phone and calls her aunt in a panic to tell her what happened. Kai has location tracking on Toy and can see where she is, so she takes off. Toy had found a release lever in the truck and opened it while the car was still moving, forcing Eric to pull over and get her back in the truck, this time tying her hands but the phone is left on the road … along with the body of a man who saw what was going on and tried to intervene. By the time Kai reaches the location of the phone, Eric and Toy are long gone. Now she has to call her sister and tell her what has happened. Mad takes a cab to wherever Kai is — that must have been one expensive fare — and they speak to the police, but the officer in charge seems to be more perplexed as to why Toy called her aunt instead of 911. She begins to take the insinuation that this is her fault personally and Mad has to ask her to leave so she can talk with the officer. Kai later tells her that the police are not going to be looking for a young Black girl in the middle of nowhere, but Mad insists that they don’t interfere and let the police do their jobs. After the police leave, Mad is on the phone and hears someone screaming. She hears the voice calling ‘Mom’ and realizes Toy is right there under their noses in the trunk of a car. Eric, though, has followed Kai into the rest room and is holding a gun on her, coming unhinged as she tries to explain that Toy doesn’t understand nuances in conversations, she takes everything at face value. Mad is doing all she can to get into the car, and just as she breaks a window Eric emerges and starts shooting at her and he gets away. Kai runs out and they both take off in her truck with Mad driving very erratically. Kai is terrified she’s going to crash into the car with Toy in the trunk but her driving results in a blow out of the transmission, stranding them on the highway in the middle of nowhere Colorado. With no phone service, Kai takes to the CB radio but she can’t even reach her trucker family that way. She finally decides to try making a video for social media using Clutch Doctor’s ‘What the Truck’ hashtag begging for assistance, but even that video upload is delayed. A tow truck arrives — no explanation given as to how the driver knew where they were as it seems no other vehicles have traveled down that road — and back at the shop Kai learns her 30-year-old truck is ready to be retired. Kai gets a message to come back to the truck stop and when they arrive, a line of trucks awaits them. Her video was posted and now she has a whole fleet ready to help them track down Toy and Eric. Eric has shown up at another truck stop looking to steal another car, knowing the police are looking for the one he’s been driving, and a trucker recognizes him from the Amber Alert. He gets on the radio and says he has Eric’s location but will the fleet arrive in time before he gets away? And will they be able to find Toy, who he has tied up in an abandoned RV deep in the forest, before it’s too late?
Taken at a Truck Stop: A Black Girl Missing Movie is a very well-produced film with an important message — monitor your kids’ social media accounts (luckily in this story Toy’s mother does know all of her log-ins and passwords, which helps the police determine who took her). While Toy thought she was talking to a boy, it turned out Eric was almost 30-years-old. She never expected to meet him face-to-face but she was also very open with what she was doing and where she was going. Because of that, he tries to blame her for his actions, feeling that she led him on, trying to convince Kai at gunpoint that he knew Toy better than she did. He still didn’t seem to grasp Toy’s situation and, honestly, I’m not sure that having Toy be on the spectrum was really necessary. This is a universal story that could happen to any unwitting teenager being led astray, so trying to make this a ‘very special’ TV movie with an autism aspect feels a bit insensitive and contrived. That being said, the story by Francesca Gailes, Jacqueline Gailes and Germaine Hill still packs a lot of deeply emotional moments into the story and builds a very realistic relationship between sisters Kai and Madison, allowing them some moments to bare their souls and form an even deeper bond than they already have. Directors Kailey Spear and Sam Spear also do a nice job of building up the story, cutting between Toy’s situation and her mother and aunt desperately searching for her. The only fault in the story is that it is never explained how Kai and Mad were located or how/when Kai’s plea for help video was uploaded. In the end it still all works extremely well and does hit some nice emotional beats but isn’t too heavy-handed. It also goes a long way in depicting the trucker community as a big family always having each others’ backs, probably not something the average person ever considers (we’ll just assume this is an accurate representation).
Lifetime
The story also works well because of the excellent cast. Beauvais is terrific as the weary Kai, ready to settle down and enjoy life off the road, while also having to be the ‘badass aunt’ who Toy looks up to. Marci T. House is also terrific as sister Madison, and even though she’s the younger one she’s the one who has had to construct a more rigid, by-the-book lifestyle while running a business and raising a child with autism. She doesn’t have the luxury to be as free-wheeling as Kai, so both actresses really play off of each other authentically, making their relationship feel real. Beauvais gets a nice moment to finally reveal some truths of her past life that her sister never knew about which helps them connect even more, and both Beauvais and House play the scene to perfection. Another aspect of that relationship, and the writers deserve so much credit for this, is that while Kai wants to run off half-cocked to find Toy, it’s Mad who tells her to sit tight and let the police do what she wants to do. If you watch any of these Lifetime movies, the lead character always feels the police are dragging their feet so it’s on them to solve a crime, so we finally get someone telling that person to sit down and shut up, let the police do their job, certain that despite what Kai thinks, they are not just going to let a young Black girl vanish without a trace. The writers and the actors really do their best to play this as realistically as possible while also making some good drama for the viewers.
Sierra Sidwell also does a very good job as Toy, especially in a difficult role that has to walk a fine line of being an authentic representation of a person on the spectrum without tipping over into parody. Hopefully she did some research and spoke to people on the spectrum to portray the character with some sensitivity. Still, it’s a good performance and she gives Toy the strength to survive her situation. Devon Kenzo is also really good as Eric, awkward at first, more desperate and terrifying as the story progresses. Roger Cross is also terrific as Clutch Doctor, the complete opposite of Kai, more level-headed, a man with a good head on his shoulder and a kind heart. He also shows a bit of a spark with Beauvais during their interactions, leaving us to hope that Kai and Clutch will eventually explore a relationship. Darcy Laurie is also very good in his few brief scenes as Detective Ortega, always keeping things professional with Kai and Madison, never condescending as the police in a lot of these movies tend to be (even though some of his questions make Kai think he is blaming her and Toy for the situation).
Overall, Taken at a Truck Stop: A Black Girl Missing Movie is a fine entry in the series with a gripping storyline and some terrific acting that elevates the whole project above the typical TV movie fare. This one is definitely worth your time.
Taken at a Truck Stop: A Black Girl Missing Movie has a run time of 1 hour 27 minutes, and is rated TV-14.
Lifetime