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For months he’s been visiting the store and for months he’s been putting off the moment. But finally, he decides to buy himself a pair of ski mountaineering skis and at the beginning, it’s a feeling of pure freedom to be able to ski down wherever he wants. He starts climbing towards the summit early in the morning when the ski lifts, now scattered throughout the region, are still and the wind is still asleep. A few photos from the top and then down he goes to break the pristine snow with that sharp-soft sound that no letters of the alphabet can describe. He turns around and it’s a satisfaction that makes him scream, being able to admire the clear and immaculate 'S' curves he’s left on the ridge with his plastic folds. He is very careful on these first outings and tries not to overdo it in choosing itineraries by opting for the safer ones, but one day he realizes that repeating what he’d done in previous years becomes boring, almost insignificant: not satisfying at all. And so he raises the bar, changes company, and starts looking for more challenging mountains, more demanding slopes. He always checks the avalanche danger, but with less and less fear. He bought an ARVA, took a glacier course, and yet with all the experience he’s accumulated over a handful of intense seasons a danger level 3 in his mind equals a danger level 1. This is what he believes and it is not, as an outsider might think, stupidity, but a sickness. A disease that takes you and makes you drown and suffocate gently in your narcissism. Because it’s not possible that every winter it’s always the damn super-experts who end up under meters of white cover.
A few weeks ago it happened to a boy. I knew him.
There are few, I hope very few because I don’t envy them at all, people who don’t have a little talent, a hobby, a passion, a vice that they are accustomed to cultivating avidly as an outlet valve from mere daily life. However, if we are not particularly careful, convinced that we can tame them as in the past, these activities can take over and become real obsessions; then it happens that one loses reason and the sense of measure. Even innocent natural water can have devastating side effects if taken in excessive daily doses. In conclusion, if you run too fast, you must be willing to accept the risk of being able to fall ruinously. And this, and many other things, is what “Like a thunder” is about.
Apparently, the troubled and silent coffin nail Luke (Ryan Gosling), a former stuntman and now a bank robber, and the clean cop Avery (Bradley Cooper) have very little in common apart from being two young fathers. Both are not satisfied with what they have. A constant need for adrenaline and money to support a child he didn’t even know he had, as opposed to the desire to get out of anonymity to become someone starting from the bottom. It’s a long movie, but not at all heavy just because it’s intense, vibrant with moments of pure adrenaline and frenzy (best rendered through the scene editing and dialogues) alternated with more reflective, dramatic (close-ups and photography) and moving moments which describe the strength of feelings without falling into rhetoric or stereotypes thanks to a high-level cast.
“Like a thunder” is a classy dramatic action movie with intense violent tones: a mix between “Drive” and “Blue Valentine”, capable of visually satisfying the audience while simultaneously encouraging them to ponder over the circularity of events; on the overall pettiness of life and the strength of feelings, (the birth of a child, in this case) as the only element capable of undermining its cynical balance. Treating all this in a dry and powerful way is no easy task for a work that remains unpredictable until the last part when the sons of the two protagonists clash, 15 years later, to close what had been left unresolved. Fate as the best possible scriptwriter to make new blood spring, a generation apart, from a poorly sealed wound. The end credits arrive with moving photography that closes the circle and metaphorically reunites the stuntman Luke and his son Jason with the same sound that had made them laugh and cry in one of those very few moments they had lived together.
The film has many virtues and Ryan Gosling, with just under an hour at his disposal, elevates it by confirming himself as an exceptional actor.
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