Movie Review : Thunder Road (2018)
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Cops are probably the least sympathetic figure in collective consciousness right now, along with billionaires and white supremacists. The idea of making a movie about an angry cop having a psychological and emotional meltdown for 90 minutes itself might get you laughed out of most pitch meetings. A film like Jim Cummings’ Thunder Road should’ve technically never seen the light of day, but I’m really, really glad it did. Sometimes it just fucking works.
Thunder Road tells the story of Jimmy Arnaud (played by Jim Cummings himself), a police officer struggling with two important personal crises: his divorce and the death of his mother. In the opening scene, Arnaud is having a spectacular meltdown when trying to eulogize his mom. Struggling to connect with his daughter (Kendal Farr), Jimmy is trying his hardest to keep the pieces of his life together despite his own emotional inadequacy.
Life and death in small town America
A film like Thunder Road is going to signify different things to different people. A lot of people will only see a dark comedy and they’re partly right. Fans of the Coen brothers’ deadpan wit and Todd Solondz uncomfortable weirdo humor will find what they’re looking for in this film. Thunder Road will make you laugh with your teeth clenched. But there’s more to it. The genius of this movie is that it walks a fine line between situational humor and personal drama.
It’s because both aspects emerge from the same thing: Jimmy’s inability to coherently (and peacefully) express his own feelings. They just pour out of him, like the blood from a gushing wound. Jimmy Arnaud is not a controlling asshole who uses his job to coerce people into giving him what he wants. A tidal wave of pain took any form of control away from him. Sometimes he doesn’t make any sense. It’s the key factor that makes him a SYMPATHETIC angry cop.
It’s an unlikely scenario, but it DOES fucking work.
I might’ve been the idea audience for a film like Thunder Road. I was raised in a small town where you’re kind of prey to reality. The way things are and the opinion other people have of you will shape what your life will be like. I was heartbroken at people witnessing Jimmy’s tailspin and deliberately not choosing to help. They had that look in their eyes I’ve seen a thousand times. When you lose parts of your life in small town America, you lose them forever.
Loss, grief & redefinition
Another theme Thunder Road discusses quite powerfully is loss. Jimmy Arnaud loses his mother at the beginning of the movie, but it’s not the only thing he loses along the way. I’m not going to spoil which parts of Jimmy’s life drift away from him, but I’ll tell you this: the more circumstances chip away at the structure of his life, the deeper he gets into this weird place where his future will only depend on the decision he makes for himself from that point on.
It’s a scary and confusing feeling for an adult because everyone’s life takes a certain path and you’re afraid of being left out, but there’s a weird, radical form of freedom to it. Jimmy experienced that form of freedom in Thunder Road. Particularly in the scene where his coworker Nate (Nican Robinson) visits him at his house. Losing important things means losing parts of your identity, but also allows you to restructure your life around values that better suit you.
In that sense, there is also a lot of beauty to Thunder Road. It’s very much a movie about seeing a guiding light in the dark and walking towards it because you got nothing better to do anymore. It really captures what emotional clumsiness and exhaustion feel like and how these feeling too often express themselves in an inadequate, self-destructive way. Jimmy’s strength is his powerful will to live. His desire not to let reality crush him despite his intense suffering.
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Friend of the site Max Booth III was telling me he liked Thunder Road slightly more than Jim Cummings’ The Wolf of Snow Hollow after I published my review of Cummings’ sophomore effort and I tend to agree with him. It’s a more humble film, but it’s also laser-focused in trying to make an unlikely idea come to life. There’s less going on and therefore more of the important stuff . Both are solid movies, but I will watch Thunder Road many, many times.
