So you’ll no doubt recall the short “Thunder Road,” which is basically a police officer giving a tragicomic monologue at his mom’s funeral. This is the feature film that Jim Cummings, the director and star, expanded that into.

So with a scene like that, there’s really only two ways to go: You could put it at the end of the movie and make it the big climax, or you could put it at the beginning as a kind of a “welp, now what.” This goes the latter way, and “now what” turns out to be him trying to be a good dad to his daughter while his life falls apart.

I love the short, but had put off watching this because I felt like it’d be unnecessary at best. I think that’s basically true. I understand why, as you’re trying to make your first self-financed feature-length film, you’d go back to your most successful IP[1], but at the same time, it seems very clearly the case that it was driven by that kind of logic, not by Cummings having a story that he absolutely needed to tell.

Beyond that, I think the expansion messes with the tone of it. The short is about a doofy, awkward guy who’s mourning and expresses that in an earnest, painful, and hilarious way. But this is about that guy being angry a lot, and while there’s that same kind of sweet awkwardness underlying his character, him engaging in acts of awkward, pained violence just has a different valence to it, especially when the guy is a cop. It’s not like it’s Joker or anything, but it goes one notch further in that direction than I’d prefer.

Overall, it’s a fine story about a man trying to hold his life together as it falls apart, but it doesn’t rise above being just fine, and it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the short. Save yourself 75 minutes and just stick with that.

  1. I like how big-company corporate that makes it sound. ↩︎