Rolling
Thunder
Shot
down over Vietnam, US Air Force Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns
home to Texas after seven long years of torture and degradation as a POW in the
infamous Hanoi Hilton. Hailed as a hero, he’s presented with a box of
silver dollars ($2500, one for every day of his captivity), the keys to a brand
new Cadillac convertible and he’s reunited with his wife (Lisa Richards) and
the son he last saw as a toddler.
Unable
to sleep, haunted by memories of his captivity, Rane tries to settle back into
his life and to make sense of a world he no longer has a place in. He’s an empty husk, rendered a dead man
walking by his experiences. When,
on his first night home, his wife tells him she’s been unfaithful and is
leaving him for family friend and local cop Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll), he
greets the news with blankness, impassive acceptance, only communicating the
rage lurking within him to the Air Force shrink (Dabney Coleman) tasked with
easing him back into society.
When
a gang of good ol’ boy thugs (among them Dukes Of Hazzard veteran James Best and
Peckinpah favourite Luke Askew) break into his house intent on stealing the
silver dollars, they beat and torture him, Rane soaking up the punishment with
the same mute stoicism he met his wife’s infidelity, refusing to talk even when
they force his hand into the sink’s waste disposal. When his wife and son interrupt the interrogation, the gang
murder them and leave Rane for dead.
But
Rane is a hard man to kill. He
survives, he endures. Waking up in
hospital, his mangled hand replaced with a prosthetic hook, Rane finally finds
a purpose and sets out for revenge…
Based
on a screenplay by Paul Schrader & Heywood Gould with solid, workmanlike
B-movie direction by John Flynn, belonging to the cycle of revenge movies that
sprang up in the wake of Michael Winner’s Death Wish, Rolling Thunder is a forgotten exploitation
gem. Written after Taxi Driver and The Yakuza, Rane is a classic Schrader
hero; a taciturn, alienated, masochist.
Isolated and alone, he’s adrift in society, a ticking timebomb just
looking for somewhere to explode and Devane, a gifted actor who just never
became the star he should have been, is fantastic in the role, his passivity
hinting at the violence and rage churning within, flashes of his glittering
dead eyes and tight, shark grin suggesting the predator he’ll become.
Unable
to adjust to freedom, Rane recreates his cell in his shed, sleeping there,
exercising there, flashbacks emphasising that mentally he is still in prison. Publicly hiding behind the dark
sunglasses that hide his dead eyes, his passivity and desire for punishment is
mistaken by all around him as strength, as heroism. When asked by his wife’s lover Cliff how he survived he
replies flatly: “You learn to love the rope. That's how you beat 'em. That's
how you beat people who torture you. You learn to love 'em. Then they don't
know you're beatin' 'em.” He only
comes to life when reenacting his torture with Cliff, encouraging him to be
rougher. When the gang attack him,
his refusal to talk isn’t toughness; it’s a desire to feel something, anything,
even if it is pain.
He’s
empty inside, a burnt-out case. As
he later tells cocktail waitress and groupie Linda (Linda Haynes): “It's like
my eyes are open and I'm looking at you but I'm dead. They've pulled out
whatever it was inside of me. It never hurt at all after that and it never
will.” As with most Schrader
heroes whether it’s Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle or Raging Bull’s Jake LaMotta, he’s
emasculated, powerless, the only way he can find peace is through the violent
assertion of his masculinity. The
only way Rane can feel whole is to kill those who have wronged him. Aided by former cellmate and fellow
dead man walking Johnny, played by a young, magnetic Tommy Lee Jones. who is
similarly unable to adjust and seems to share an almost homoerotic tension with
Rane (who knows what went on when the lights were out? What happens in Hanoi, stays in
Hanoi…), Rane heads down Mexico-way to enact his brutal vengeance in a messy,
chaotic whorehouse shootout that is as much the consummation of their love as
it is an excuse for these two broken men to take control of their lives.
A
down and dirty revenge flick that’s part modern-day Western, part psychological
drama, Rolling Thunder’s finally getting the re-release it deserves. And yes, Devane does sharpen up that hook
and use it exactly how you want him to...
David Watson
Director
John Flynn
Writers
Paul Schrader & Heywood Gould
Cast
William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes, James Best, Dabney
Coleman, Lisa Richards, Luke Askew, Lawrason Driscoll, James Victor, Cassie
Yates
Country
USA
Running time
96 minutes
Year
1977
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