SIFF 18: Thunder Road (2018)

Title: Thunder Road

Year: 2018

Genre: Comedy | Drama |

Runtime: 92 min

Director: Jim Cummings

Starring:  Jim Cummings, Kendal Farr, Nican Robinson

  7,3/10

A FATHER -DAUGHTER RELATIONSHIP THAT MATTERS

The thing with this movie is this; When you start at the beginning of the movie for like ten minutes and there is a policeman crying and dances simultaneously to an old pink radio, it sort of internally describes what kind of movie this is. The whole movie tells the story of Officer Jim Arnaud, (Jim Cummings) together with characters played by Kendal Farr and Nican Robinson, who plays Arnaud’s best friend and wife. At the beginning Jim loses his mother and he has shared care of his daughter.

A long the way, just as expected everything becomes a meltdown to Jim, and he truly bidding on himself as he directs, writes and acts in this movie. Most of the shots in this feature film has long simple shot and eventually it grows from boring and annoying to somehow important for the story. He tries to do everything for his daughter and just as things catches up, his friends are there for him, which is nice thinking.

Therefore, Thunder Road sends a message about friendship, love and family. That means, even if you’ve a bad time as this man has, he has people who is there for him and support him no matter what. The casting is right on spot and even if this is just a feature version of a shorter version of a comedy, it keeps in line for the whole story for a feature length. The actors who plays these characters really becomes their character and make it trustworthy that the can keep it up for the rest of the movie.

The editing makes it watchable, a lot of long shots that often doesn’t bring something emotional connection with the director’s message. Just like the editing, the music in this feature, brings a lot of comedic stunts and some real drama scenes that really makes an emotional roller-coaster and turn this whole shit upside-down. As the divorce is right around the corner, this movie still makes jokes but there is some serious touch over the whole movie. This happens especially at the moment when he found someone, he know dead and he asks his daughter, if she want to run away together with him. Then it grows a little bit further before it’s actually are a movie about a father-daughter relationship, that hasn’t been showed before. At least not in this way.

This films auteur brings on a stellar performance and show both comedy and drama in one of the best independent movies from USA, this year.