Thun­der Road – first look review

There’s some­thing inher­ent­ly fun­ny about the sight of a grown man in a police uni­form strug­gling to change the bat­ter­ies in a Hel­lo Kit­ty boom­box. In choos­ing to open Thun­der Road on this jux­ta­po­si­tion of soft fem­i­n­i­ty and author­i­ta­tive mas­culin­i­ty, film­mak­er Jim Cum­mings sets out his stall right from the start.

Adapt­ed from Cum­mings’ Sun­dance Grand Jury Prize-win­ning short of the same name, the film focus­es on Tex­an police offi­cer James ​‘Jim’ Arnaud (played by Cum­mings) as he strug­gles to come to terms with the death of his moth­er. The first scene sees Jim give a dis­as­trous eulo­gy at her funer­al, in which he attempts to hon­our her mem­o­ry by per­form­ing a dance set to one of her favourite songs, Bruce Springsteen’s ​‘Thun­der Road’. The mono­logue spills out of Arnaud between sobs, chaot­i­cal­ly piv­ot­ing between anec­dotes about their rocky moth­er-son rela­tion­ship to gar­bled obser­va­tions about life more gen­er­al­ly. As Cum­mings’ lens slow­ly zooms in on him, Arnaud all falls apart – fore­shad­ow­ing the way in which grief is about to dis­rupt his life more than any ill-planned funer­al dance.

From there we see Arnaud’s try to bond with his young daugh­ter Crys­tal (Kendal Farr) and par­ry with his estranged wife Ros (Joce­lyn DeBoer). Marked by his own poor rela­tion­ship with his father, as well as the recent loss of his moth­er, Jim is deter­mined to be a good dad. His bond­ing attempts with Crys­tal are earnest, but he’s as blind­sided by the intri­ca­cies of pre-teen life as he is his wife’s announce­ment she intends to divorce him and seek sole cus­tody of their daughter.

Mean­while, life on the force proves gru­elling for Arnaud, who isn’t cop­ing well with… any­thing. His con­cerned part­ner Nathaniel watch­es from the pas­sen­ger seat as glimpses of their lives as beat cops in small­town Texas hint at a com­mu­ni­ty rid­dled by prob­lems big­ger than death and divorce.

There are no easy answers on offer – in fact, things end on a slight­ly melan­choly note – but Thun­der Road is a fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ter study, ground­ed in Cum­mings’ ener­getic per­for­mance as the tail­spin­ning Arnaud. His inabil­i­ty to express his emo­tions in a healthy man­ner threat­ens his rela­tion­ships and liveli­hood – through grit­ted teeth and a clenched jaw, he tries to fight the over­whelm­ing tidal wave of grief that con­stant­ly seems on the horizon.

The beau­ty of Cum­mings’ film lies in its deft under­stand­ing that life itself is often a farce, blend­ing com­e­dy with tragedy until you’re unsure if the tears welling in the cor­ner of your eyes are from laugh­ter or sad­ness. Cum­mings is an emo­tive actor with­out pre­tence – hav­ing lived with Arnaud for so long makes his por­tray­al engross­ing, but more than that, believ­able. Emo­tion­al but unable to express him­self in a con­struc­tive man­ner, Arnaud is a prime exam­ple of how flawed the bina­ry con­cepts of mas­culin­i­ty and fem­i­n­i­ty are, and Thun­der Road is a poignant exam­i­na­tion of how messy and unro­man­tic grief real­ly is.