Rolling Thunder

Good writing, acting and directing place this violent revenge melodrama a cut or two above most films of its genre. William Devane gives a strong, stoic performance as Major Charles Rane, an ex-Vietnam POW who returns home to his wife and son, only to have his peace-time dreams shattered by a gang of vicious, menacing home-invading hoods who murder his family and leave him permanently maimed. After rehabilitation, he goes gunning for the people responsible for the crime. Tommy Lee Jones is very good as his fellow Army buddy who willingly joins him on the vengeance trail. The film is enhanced by adding some psychological insights into Devane's character....we get a revealing peek at how his wartime experiences have changed him and what makes him tick. The film is tense and extremely violent in spots, but the violence is not gratuitous. Paul Schrader, who wrote the classic "Taxi Driver" also wrote the original story here...and it shows. This one's worth seeking out.

So many films these days attempt to emulate the classic grindhouse feel of '70s cinema: tough, rough around the edges and completely hardass. Most of them fail in the attempt, coming across as pastiches rather than throwbacks. Sometimes it requires us to revisit those films of old to remind ourselves of what it is that makes them so great.

I first caught ROLLING THUNDER on television about a decade ago. It was one of those late-night showings, and the film stayed with me, at least two scenes in particular: the kitchen scene and the climax. Both were incredibly powerful and just wouldn't leave my mind. I was annoyed to find out that you couldn't buy it on DVD for many years, so it resided at the back of my mind where I continued to remember how great it was and wished for it to be one day released.

Well, my wish came true, and you can now buy this film, remastered on Blu-ray no less. And it still holds up as a lean, mean, action thriller, boasting extremely tough performances, a script that emphasises realism above all else, and some outstanding action sequences. One of the reasons that it works so well is that, aside from the action/revenge plotting, like FIRST BLOOD and THE DEER HUNTER it's really a film about Vietnam veterans attempting to readjust themselves in a 'normal' world.

William Devane – one of those familiar faces in cinema and the type to rarely get a leading role – delivers a strong turn as Major Charles Rane, a guy trying to fit into a world he no longer recognises. Devane's performance in ROLLING THUNDER is all about subtlety. If we're lucky, we'll see a flicker of emotion play out across his features, or a certain split-second look in his eyes. Other than that, he's never less than gruff and able.

The revenge plot line is very well portrayed in a minimalist style. Paul Schrader's screenplay is excellent, as was his one for TAXI DRIVER, and the two films have much in common: not least insanely violent climaxes which really pay off on all the suspense and drama that's built up previously. Another source of greatness is Tommy Lee Jones, featuring here in a rather minor supporting role that nonetheless shows off the kind of laconic talent that would later make him a big name in Hollywood. Some modern viewers might find the pacing a little subdued and sedate by modern standards, but they'd be missing the point: for a film that's essentially a gun drama, ROLLING THUNDER works all because of that subtlety.

The low-budget production company American International Pictures got themselves a movie with a then-groundbreaking post-Vietnam War plot and message that deserved a far superior studio...

And that's because important subjects can be costly -- yet thanks to creative and economical director John Flynn, ROLLING THUNDER becomes an entertaining road movie on an exploitation vengeance trail...

Severely built into returning POW veterans William Devane and younger sidekick Tommy Lee Jones... one married with a wife and kid, the other harsh, haunted and born to lose...

So it's not long before Devane's Major Charles Rane, after a rare-coin-theft gone extremely bad... resulting in the shocking deaths of his separated wife, beloved yet distant son and the loss of his own hand... is (through irreversible reaction) thrust into action...

Paving way for who's at first an unlikable side-character in Lawrason Driscoll as Cliff... the wife and son's more typically befitting substitute dad... ultimately partaking in what feels like his own more basic and narrowed, location-hopping, investigatory revenge flick...

Blindly seeking the killers through dilapidated Mexico taverns and broken-down villas while Devane and blonde beauty Linda Haynes's POW groupie turned gun-moll provide a more fleshed-out, genuinely romantic mainline -- yet with the same gritty goal intact...

Meanwhile an underused Tommy Lee Jones's arsenal must wait for the bloody Sam Peckinpah-style ending (combined with director Martin Scorsese and this picture's screenwriter Paul Schrader's TAXI DRIVER) that has Devane -- progressively befitting a role he initially seems too old for -- finally becoming the grisly ultra-violent anti-hero...

Yet it's those previous scenes with Linda Haynes -- whose searing motivation to keep him away from trouble are as intense as what he's about to step into -- that really showcases what ROLLING THUNDER could and does afford well: a moving character-driven melodrama where the search means more than its inevitable (yet still unpredictable) outcome.

Paul Schrader's very best screenplay--and yes, I include the one about the guy who drives a cab--is this 1977 masterpiece, which wins my vote for most underrated movie of the seventies. (That's a long list, too.) Major Charles Rane (William Devane) is one of Gogol's dead souls. When he comes home after seven years of bone-crunching torture in the Hanoi Hilton, the missus has taken up with the guy next door. After a band of outlaws descend on the Rane manor to steal the Major's one precious possession, tragedy descends on Major Rane a second time, stealing whatever shred of humanness was in him, and sending him on a one-way destination: vengeance at any cost.

ROLLING THUNDER is the pulpiest, the sharpest, and the most humanly rich of all Schrader's "God's lonely man" sagas. The scenes between the Major and his new lover (Linda Haynes, magnificent) are a case study in the meeting point between the broken and the empty. Their scenes--in which the Major almost never utters a word--are a better approximation of the high points of Raymond Carver than Robert Altman's scrambled version. The director John Flynn--who also directed the tip-top THE OUTFIT with Robert Duvall as a Major Ranish hoodlum--never makes one false step. The guts of the finale--a Schraderish reprise of the last act of THE WILD BUNCH--seems amazing even for 1977.

ROLLING THUNDER is out of print and hard to find. Seek it at any and all costs. If seventies cinema were to be defined in a nutshell, this movie is it.

Screenplay of "Rolling Thunder" was co-written by Paul Schrader, who had just written "Taxi Driver". I feel this is William Devane's best movie, and a powerful start for Tommy Lee Jones. This is one dark movie, almost as dark as "Taxi Driver", and it misses by "not much". Basically, a gang of no-neck Bubbas do in Devane's wife and child, yet he survives the robbery. It is then revenge time, and the remainder of the movie is "out to kill", and kill it does. Devane and Jones, as recently returned inmates of the Hanoi Hilton are, in their own ways, tightly wrapped around the axle. At the movie's end, let it suffice to be known, they indeed find the bad guys. It is a real squeaker about just who the bad guys really are in this post-Vietnam movie.