Rolling Thunder -1977
Director
John Flynn

Writers
Paul Schrader
Heywood Gould

Cast
William Devane
Tommy Lee Jones
Linda Haynes

Review by Wayne Malin

It had potential,

Movie about two POWs–Major Charles Rane (William Devane) and Cpl. Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones)–returning home after many years away. Both have trouble adjusting. Then some vicious thugs kill Devane’s wife and child…and Devane goes out for revenge.

I realize this film has a cult following but I can’t see why. The first half is pretty interesting showing Devane having flashbacks to torture he endured and learning to deal with being home. Then his family is killed and this turns into a standard revenge melodrama. All the subtlety in the first half goes out the window and it just becomes one fight or shootout after another. It all ends in a virtual bloodbath (that isn’t that bad by today’s standards).

At the end we see that Jones seems to enjoy killing people. Right there is that disturbing (and untrue) theory that all POWs are unstable and just love killing people.

Acting doesn’t help. Devane underplays this but WAY too much. You never see any of the emotions underneath that he should be feeling. Jones is barely in it enough, and he isn’t good. Linda Haynes plays a woman who goes along with Devane–she’s just terrible. Even Dabney Coleman (in a small role) is lousy.

So a potentially interesting idea is thrown away because of a lousy script and terrible acting. I give this a 5 because some of the action isn’t bad.

Review by Zetes

Rolling Thunder (1977)

SPOILERS,

I can’t believe Paul Schraeder had anything to do with this. I’m kind of wishing they just credited him because the film shares many similarities with Taxi Driver, but it’s too different to be considered plagarism. The film starts off very well. William Devane plays a POW just returning home from Vietnam. The performance is very good. Devane really captures what it must be like to return to a world that has more or less forgotten him.

His child, a newborn when he was shipped off, has no idea who this man is. He’s eager but afraid to spend time with his father, and the father feels much the same way. His wife has since found someone new (James Best, in fact, from The Dukes of Hazzard), and she must walk on eggshells. At first, the unfaithful wife is very tastefully treated. She’s shown sympathetically, which I didn’t expect. And Devane’s attitude to her is also well done. He’s obviously hurt, but, in a way, it’s like he never believed that he could relate to her anymore anyways, and, in a way, there’s a bit of relief that she’s not his responsibility.

Likewise, James Best isn’t (initially) made into a jackass or anything like that. But then the writers seem to get bored with this very touching and very human re-adjustment story. Not enough shooting, I guess. Here comes the revenge element, in the stupidest way possible, and the whole film starts to feel like it was written by a Vietnam veteran who had a big chip on his shoulder and needed to congratulate himself for all his underappreciated suffering. Which might be interesting if that were actually the case, but I’m pretty sure it’s not. Devane is given some $2,000 worth of silver dollars at a public ceremony, and a couple of days later he is confronted by about six big men who want to steal it from him.

One has to wonder why any one criminal, let alone a gang of them, would want to rip off a recently returned POW for a measly $2,000. And their stupidity doesn’t end there. Not only do they steal Devane’s chump change, but they whack his (soon-to-be ex-) wife and ten year old son and then they cut off his hand! You’d think one out of the half-dozen thugs would think to himself, gee, we should probably murder this soon-to-be-insane-with-rage Vietnam veteran, too, but no. They leave him alive, apparently without caring whether or not he’ll report the incident to the police.

I mean, he did see their faces and almost every name among the criminals was mentioned during the robbery. Or maybe they knew that he was too macho to involve the police. But in that case they didn’t think far enough ahead to realize he’d be coming after them a couple of months later when his hand has healed and after he’s gotten used to his new hook hand (and sharpened it).

The film gets more and more offensive by the minute. All the good work from the beginning is squandered, and it feels like that was done on purpose. Each and every bit of ambiguity from the first half hour is systematically p**sed on. The most telling moment comes when Devane finally confronts the lead villain and, right before he blasts him, says, “This is for my son,” leaving out his unfaithful wife.

It’s very pathetic, and so very disappointing considering that there had to be a few smart people who worked on the movie. The first half hour or so, like I said, is excellent. The acting throughout is excellent. The actors did their jobs, creating multifaceted and interesting characters, even when they’re doing uninteresting things. Tommy Lee Jones is also in it, and his character, though only in the film a little bit, is extremely interesting.

A late portrait of his loving family shows just how much a couple of people cared about making a compelling film. 5/10.