In the bonus track of the DVD of "American Dreamer," there is an extended segment called "No Free Rides--The Making of 'American Dreamer.'" The filmmakers described how their shoot in Norfolk, Virginia lasted only sixteen days, prior to the editing work. Volunteer students from Old Dominion contributed as interns in all aspects of production. The result was an unusually high-caliber independent film.

The title in the film in its draft form was "All the Animals Come Out Tonight," and the final film cut focused on three central characters. Cam is the taxi driver shuttling a drug dealer named Mazz around Norfolk. On one of the stops, Mazz visits his infant son Prince and Mazz's girlfriend Marina.

It is in the triangle of Cam, Mazz, and Marina that the driver hatches his ill-conceived plan to kidnap the little boy and hold him for a $20,000 ransom. But Cam is so incompetent that the plan falls apart, leading to loss of life when Mazz and Marina desperately seek to locate the child.

While the subject matter of "American Dreamer" is grim to the extreme, the three main performances are riveting. Somehow, the actors, screenwriter, and director were able to evoke a synergy from the three characters that resulted in depth and complexity to each character.

A concept of the filmmakers as explained in the DVD bonus track was that of "invisible people" with a character like Cam who was once relevant as a computer programmer, but whose life fell apart when he lost his job. Mazz clawed his way up to the top and is ruthless, yet still loves his son and the concept of family. Marina is a drug addict who has lost her way, sensing almost immediately that her life is over when her son is missing. The humanity of these invisible people comes across remarkably in their lives of desperation depicted in this film.

Cam (Jim Gaffigan) is a HAIL (Uber/Lyft) driver who has trouble making ends meet. He has alimony and child support payments and has run out of options. He has been driving around a drug dealer (Robbie Jones) for two hundred dollars a night. He gets the idea to kidnap the dealer's child and ransom him. It does not go well.

I liked the acting. The film had a few good scenes and too many scenes that went nowhere. The plot wasn't great.

Guide: F-word. No sex or nudity.

Another version of the cab driver scheme, after Marty Scorcese's TAXI DRIVER, this one is terrific to me, showing a very unusual topic, where the supposed good guy becomes rapidly somewhere the evil one, but not truly of course. Tense, gripping, the directing and acting are far from Hollywood standards but closer to Sundance festival movies instead. I highly recommend it. A film where the supposed good guy behaves as the bad one, and the actually nasty character occupies a role of the usually victim, is very unusual, and that precisely what I crave for. But of course, the ending - this time in a classical way - is totally immoral. If you had wanted a moral ending, it should have been different, because the scheme was reversed from the beginning. See what I mean?