Thunder Road - more than just a Springsteen song | Just Films & That
Just Films & That is a podcast that celebrates underrated and underseen films. For this episode, one of our guests chose Thunder Road from 2018. Comedian John Aggasild chose this tragic comedy as he thinks it’s underrated and underseen, and with only managing less than half a million dollars at the box office, we are inclined to agree. You can listen to the full episode on Thunder Road now, wherever you get your podcasts.
Transcript
00:00 - My mother was a extremely charitable woman.
00:03 - She loved Bruce Springsteen.
00:05 She used to sing "Thunder Road" to me
00:07 when I was going to sleep.
00:08 - Everything go okay?
00:10 - Everything went normal.
00:11 - It starts out and there's a harmonica.
00:14 - So "Thunder Road" is a film from 2018.
00:18 It's a sort of drama and tragic comedy.
00:20 So it's about a policeman in Texas
00:23 who's dealing with the death of his mother
00:25 whilst also going through a custody battle with his ex-wife.
00:28 And he's finding the whole thing very overwhelming
00:31 and very traumatic.
00:32 At the time of recording,
00:34 this film on IMDb gets seven out of 10.
00:37 And then over on Rotten Tomatoes,
00:39 the audience give it 91%
00:41 and then the critics give it 97%.
00:44 So Josh, this was picked by one of our guests, wasn't it?
00:47 - Yeah, this was picked by one of our guests,
00:49 a comedian called John Agathil.
00:51 He picked this mainly because he thought
00:52 that it was underseen and underrated.
00:55 It's a feature-length film.
00:56 It's based on a short film that's made by the same guy.
00:58 It's made by a guy called Jim Cummings,
01:00 who has written it and directed it
01:01 and stars in it and stuff like that.
01:03 Listen, I enjoyed it the first time I watched it,
01:05 but when I watched it again, I got a lot more from it.
01:08 And I loved it.
01:09 I really, really enjoyed it.
01:10 I mean, it's all on Jim Cummings as a character.
01:12 His performance, his writing,
01:15 the way the whole thing is executed.
01:17 The film is sort of punctuated by these big, long scenes
01:21 that are not edited.
01:22 He does big, long monologues about something.
01:25 And the way he does them is just,
01:27 it's quite mesmerizing.
01:28 You can't take your eyes off him.
01:29 - I'm fine.
01:31 I've never been better in my life.
01:33 - See me wrestle an alligator, help the alligator.
01:35 - I hadn't seen it before,
01:36 but I thought it was just absolutely excellent.
01:38 It gets the blend of tragedy and comedy just so perfect.
01:41 It's probably one of the best I've ever seen.
01:43 The performances in it are really strong
01:45 and the script is just excellent.
01:47 It feels so authentic and so real,
01:49 yet incredibly dramatic at the same time.
01:52 And I think there's just such a skill to getting that right
01:54 and without letting these situations
01:56 and these sort of very intense moments of grief
01:58 becoming too cheesy or maybe over the top.
02:00 The gravitas he has when he's on screen is incredible.
02:03 And this was just such a triumph.
02:05 Was there anything that you didn't like about the film?
02:07 - I personally don't have anything I didn't like about it,
02:09 but I can see how it might not be for you.
02:13 It very much is for me.
02:14 But if you're looking for something
02:15 that's a little bit more mainstream
02:16 or a little bit broader,
02:18 you might find this to be a little bit aimless
02:21 or not quite your tone.
02:22 What about you?
02:24 - Well, the only thing for me
02:24 was that I really didn't like the end credits.
02:27 I thought the font choice was really peculiar
02:29 and the way that they cross faded from one page to the next,
02:32 it just felt really strange and really student-like,
02:35 which was a real surprise
02:36 because the rest of the film felt so expertly done.
02:39 But that really is it.
02:40 And that's such small potatoes
02:41 considering some of the stuff that we look at in these films.
02:44 I think with those scores, the IMDb score,
02:46 the one in the seven,
02:47 I would definitely say that that's underrated,
02:50 but seeing as the critics gave it 97%,
02:52 that can't be underrated at all, I don't think.
02:54 - I'd probably say that might be appropriately rated though.
02:57 What do you think?
02:58 - It's probably appropriately rated
03:00 in that it's highly rated and we liked it.
03:02 I think it's underseen though.
03:03 I do think it's underseen.