Good guys finish last in this amusing and poignant new film.
The 2018 edition of the SXSW Conference and Festivals is here, and the Cinapse team is on the ground, covering all things film.
For complete coverage, please visit cinapse.co/sxsw.
The first dozen minutes of Thunder Road build like a slow moving rainstorm, as a funeral eulogy transforms into a monologue of humor, loss, and eventually dancing. It’s a masterful performance that launches Thunder Road down a path that emotionally zigs and zags to the very end.
It is no surprise the opening has the power it does. The scene is virtually a shot-for-shot remake of the short film of the same name. Writer, director, and star Jim Cummings road a wave of buzz to create a feature-length version of his brilliant short.
New Orleans native Cummings came to Austin to shoot the story of Officer Jim Arnaud, as likable and forthright a man as you’re ever going to find, who is experiencing some real turmoil in his life. Other than the passing of his mother that inspires the opening, Jim is also a divorced father, struggling to be a good parent while also dealing with the demands of his job in law enforcement.
It is Cummings’s vacillating performance as Jim that propels the movie forward through several twists and turns. While he yearns for nothing but a simple, peaceful life, Jim can fall off the rails at the drop of a hat. Cummings’s facial expressions go from kind to tortured and back again in an emotional gymnastics few actors could pull off.
The subject matter sometimes veers to the dark side even as humor undergirds the entire enterprise. Thunder Road might not having gotten permission to use the Springsteen song, but it still manages to explore what it means to be trapped in a small town, buffeted by circumstances that often yield devastating results.
Enjoy the original short film below, courtesy of Vimeo.