"Thunder Road" and other hidden gems

Thunder Road is a new indie movie written, directed, and starring Jim Cummings.

An expanded version of his short film from 2016, the story follows a small town police officer, Jimmy Arnaud, and his emotional breakdowns stemming from his mother’s death, his divorce, and the custody battle over his young daughter. Arnaud constantly struggles to keep calm and cool before snapping into emotional breakdowns, and then shaking it off to act as if he wasn’t crying at all, it’s fine, he’s fine, nah these aren’t tears what are you talking about?

As a member of the audience, it is impossible not to feel for Jimmy. He is genuine and good-hearted, but unfiltered, which (along with an amazing performance by Cummings) is what makes it so easy to empathize with his sobbing, but also leads to the funniest bits. Because believe it or not, it is a comedy, and one of the best I’ve seen this year, but you’d never know it from the trailer.

A perfect example of what I mean is during an emotional rant in front of his coworkers. Jimmy, running through all the ways that life has been difficult lately, screams through tears how he had to sleep in his car for a time, and another officer replies “yeah, I bought you breakfast.”
Jimmy briefly calms down and lowers his voice, saying with an honest but hoarse voice “Thank you so much for doing that Jerry, that meant a lot back then.” There’s a beat where you think he’s starting to cool off, but then suddenly he pouts “…But fuck you I’m upset right now” before getting fired right back up again.

I snorted in the theater loudly, embarrassingly, with laugher. But this scene played completely differently in the trailer. The preview has no punchline. No rescinding of his sincere appreciation for the purposes of continuing his fit. He says it meant a lot to him, and then they immediately cut to a different part of his rant, as a slow, somber song plays on a piano.

Don’t get me wrong though, the movie is full of heart; just as many moments of laughter as there are moments when you grab your significant other’s hand for an “I’m sad now” squeeze. Jimmy is pathetic and pitiful; you want him to succeed, but you can hardly blame him when his emotions get the best of him. When he discovers at a parent-teacher conference that his daughter is having trouble in school, he slams the desk in anger, collects himself with a joke (“I went to LSU so I’m used to it, y’know they had to quit serving ice 'cause the guy who had the recipe graduated”), but then his face shifts in grief, afraid that he had passed on his dyslexia. Just as you start to feel the heartbreak, the teacher gingerly picks up some scissors from the desk and slides them into his pocket.

All in all, this movie is excellent, and the critics seem to agree.

I encourage everyone to check it out! Just don’t go in expecting the tone of the trailer to match the tone of the movie.

Most of the screenings are over or ending soon, I’m not sure if they will be adding many more but it will be out at the end of the month on itunes.

I wrote this mostly as a review for a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed that I’m not sure many have heard about yet, but also because it had me trying to think of other examples of trailers that seemed to indicate a totally different genre or tone than what the movie actually was. That isn’t a very interesting topic for discussion though so to hell with it, now I just want to hear about movies y’all have seen recently that you liked but maybe others missed out on, and why you enjoyed it!