For years I’d heard about this cool Robert Mitchum movie, Springsteen even mentions it as inspiration. Or maybe just stealing a cool title for what has to be one of my top three songs. Since Turner Movie Classics was unreeling it commercial-free last night, I figured the time was right.
Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the 45 years that have passed since Thunder Road was made. Either way I just didn’t get the appeal of the film or of Mitchum. The linked write up says that he fills the screen with his brooding presence but I just saw him as unable to express the emotions of his character.
The other featured actors, save Gene Barry as a Treasury agent out to bust up the moonshine rackets, look like friends or relatives of Mitchum’s and others in charge rather than actual, oh, actors. Mitchum’s son James, for instance, plays his younger brother but is barely capable of remembering his lines, much less acting them. The actresses who play his love interests, Keely Smith and Sandra Knight, are on about the same level, especially Smith–her eyes look like they’re about to explode off her face in every scene. At least she has an excuse, being a singer (married to Louis Prima) and not an actress; Knight is more famous for having Jack Nicholson’s daughter Jennifer.
Still, the film does show life that doesn’t exist any more in the USA, but a life that I think many people (*cough* Southern Republicans *cough*) look back on with far more fondness than is justified.
Barely recommended
BillSaysThis 