Rolling Like Thunder (2021)

(On Cable TV, September 2022) As someone who is surprisingly and vociferously opposed to graffiti, I did not have a particularly good time watching Rolling Like Thunder, a documentary film that delves into the subculture of those who draw graffiti on freight train wagons. My opposition to graffiti is largely aesthetic—even the most artistically ambitious ones (with strong composition, clean lines and bright colours: the vast majority of them are not artistically ambitious) still feel like a blight over utilitarian objects. There’s some built-in irony in the film beginning with New York City making a deliberate effort to clean up graffiti-covered subway cars in the 1980s, driving “artists” to paint rolling stock outside the city. We have many interviews with the small-time vandals defacing the trains: some of them are even interesting. But the film’s MVP is an anti-graffiti activist who has found his own way of discouraging the vandalism through vandalism of his own—badly painting over some parts of the graffiti as to deface the defacement without giving them the satisfaction of a virgin ready-to-be-repainted surface. Some time is also spent detailing the horrifying injuries suffered by the vandals as they slip on the tracks and under the cars, or are apprehended by security. Rolling Like Thunder, despite its awed portrayal of vandals and intention to humanize them, did nothing to change my mind—they come across as immature idiots picking on easy targets for dubious thrills (and those are the artistically ambitious ones—for each one of them, there must be ten, twenty others just spray-painting squiggles for giggles). I had marginally more respect for those able to do something creative with their skills—whether it’s taking great photos of vandalized rolling stock, becoming lawyers, or turning their artistic skills to non-ugly purposes. Such unimpressed reactions are probably playing into the hands of director Roger Gastman, as he goads the mundanes into spray-painting his subject matter with disdain. He admittedly delivers a slick product with technically adequate interviews and some evocative footage. It’s the thrust of the documentary that seems off balance: Barely any discussion of the visual ugliness of train graffiti or its costs, while some sad stories are lionized or played up—who cares that there’s a beef between vandals painting over each other’s work: isn’t that irony too thick to be grasped? Alas, the blight will continue, and it’s a continent-wide problem by this point. I would have enjoyed Rolling Like Thunder a lot more had it been a documentary about something long gone.