Movie Review: Thunder Road

Thunder Road (2018) **** / *****

Directed by: Jim Cummings.

Written by: Jim Cummings.

Starring: Jim Cummings (Officer Jim Arnaud), Kendal Farr (Crystal Arnaud), Nican Robinson (Officer Nate Lewis), Jocelyn DeBoer (Rosalind Arnaud), Chelsea Edmundson (Morgan Arnaud), Macon Blair (Dustin Zahn), Ammie Masterson (Celia Lewis), Bill Wise (The Captain).

 

You know almost immediately in Thunder Road that its main character – Officer Jim Arnaud – has some major issues. He is giving a eulogy for his mother, while in his police uniform, and it goes on for minute after painful minute – all in one shot. In the eulogy he swears, goes off on tangents that have nothing to do with his mother, and is basically a mess. And this is all before he decides to play Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road and do a dance (his mother was a dance instructor) for her, on a child’s boom box. When the boom box doesn’t work (because, of course it doesn’t – this is an indie movie that could never afford a Springsteen song) – he does the dance anyway – twirling and dancing with no music at all. It’s a sequence that goes on for about 10 minutes, and its mesmerizing – painful and hilarious in equal measure, never blinking, never looking away. The film doesn’t ever quite top it – but it’s a testament to Cummings as a writer, director and especially an actor that he is able to deliver a movie that deserves an opening that brilliant – in a film that makes you want to see what he’s going to do next.

 

Arnaud is a man who seems to be constantly be teetering on the brink – ready to boil over into fits of impotent rage. He’s a cop, and that’s scary of course because delusional cops with guns and anger issues are not a good mix – but Arnaud’s anger is more tinged with sadness that anything else – he’s more likely to break something than to hurt someone. When he’s called in for a parent teacher conference for example, and is told his daughter is acting out – he responds first by swearing, and then by picking up the children’s desk he was sitting at, and lifting it over his head – only to break down when the teacher informs him that it is his daughter’s desk. Still, you wouldn’t want to see this man with a gun, a badge and power – and yet, that’s what he has. But even his fellow cops look at him funny – know there’s not something right with him.

 

Arnaud’s life has fallen apart in the past year or so. Yes, there is the death of his mother, which is the most recent blow. But his wife Ros (Jocelyn DeBoer) has also left him and taken their daughter Crystal (Kendal Farr) – and applied for full custody, which she is probably going to get. He tries with Crystal – he really does – and he really does love her. He’s just so bad with her, no real idea on how to relate to her. In a way, the film is made up of variations on that first scene – where Arnaud tries to keep it together, tries to do the right thing, and ends up not being able to control himself. Most of the time, people look at him with more pity than anything else – makes them uncomfortable, he needs help, but no one is going to do that for him.

 

Cummings walks a very fine line in his performance and direction here. You can easily imagine this movie being a very dark comedy – like something Jody Hill and Danny McBride would do, or perhaps something far broader – 1990s/early 2000s Adam Sandler for instance. Except Cummings never really goes comedy – or more accurately, he walks right up to the line of where another film would have the punchline, that moment that makes the audience laugh to relieve the tension, and then doesn’t cross it.

 

Cummings is clearly a talented guy – and one I cannot wait to see what he does next. His instincts as a performer are spot on – he could have made Arnaud into a laughingstock, or just completely pathetic, but he doesn’t really do either. You root for him, even if you shouldn’t. As a director, his instincts are great as well – he doesn’t cut away, doesn’t give you that relief – he lets the scenes play out to their awkward, ending. If there is an issue, it may well be that the film really does kind of feel like a series of scenes, rather than a whole narrative – with a twist at the end that comes out of left field, and I’m not sure really works. But then again, for Arnaud, it seems like everything comes out of left field – everything knocks him flat, because he has no idea what is coming next. No matter what, Thunder Road announced a major new talent. I hope he follows through on it.