Admirable film.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Robert Mitchum plays a bootlegging driver and his real life son Jim is cast as his younger brother. Jim is the spitting image of his father. Federal alcohol agents are constantly chasing Mitchum as he transports the illegal booze across state lines. He lives with his ma and pa, who are also in what seems to be the family business. At one point, at a meeting of the minds, the family heads discuss the logistical aspects of the operation. As the stills are smashed up by the law, they laugh and say this stuff has been going on for over two hundred years in the backwoods, and will continue, no matter what the law does. Cars are wrecked, a few people killed along the way, but Thunder Road is basically just an old fashioned good guys vs. bad guys movie with the audience mostly cheering on the bad guys, especially the elder Mitchum.

Fine low-budget action drama that pits the moralistic urban view of "hillbillies" against the philosophy of people from the mountain (in this case of Irish ancestry) who live by simple rules. Robert Mitchum plays Luke Doolin, a stubborn man who is a war defector and also in charge of the illegal moon-shining business run by his family for 250 years. On top of this he has against him a ruthless intermediary who wants to control the business in the area, including the county where the Doolins live and operate. I found most interesting the way innocent lives were taken up to a point: in our times, both Luke's singer girlfriend and his brother would have been killed in the middle of act 2. Sandra Knight, James Mitchum and Keely Smith are convincing in first big roles.

When I would hear Robert Mitchum's voice on those beef commercials, he sounded just a bit psychotic. Like he had just slaughtered a steer and was going to hand the meat to you raw. Here he gets caught up in the moonshine business, carting shipments of the home made alcohol to all precincts, facing off against criminals and the police, who were just as bad. He is the centerpiece of this movie, which is, for the most part, pretty predictable, and lacking in real heroism. Mitchum, with his monotone, his sad eyes, and his seeming entitlements (and, I am certain, his sex appeal to women) grinds his way through the forces he must face to get the job done. There are some pretty cool car chases and a fantastic theme song.

I grew up in oak ridge,Tennessee near bearden where the moonshiner that Lucas doolin portrayed was killed running from the law-he was nicknamed tweet-o-low-twill and was from rockholds,Kentucky and actually crashed into a power station like mitchum did on Kingston pike in bearden-the movie brought in the mob who were not involved in the true story-there is a book return to thunder road written by a man named Alex gabbard,who never could get an interview with mitchum regarding the true story that mitchum based his book on-apparently Mr.gabbard was friends of tweet-o-low-twill and met him while staying with his grandparents when he was a boy