Rolling Thunder (1977)

Intrigue ,action packed, tension and outstanding acting by large cast. Years later his imprisonment as P.O.W, Major Charles Rane (William Devane) is released from tough jail at Vietnam. He returns home to a small town in Texas, and for his endurance and courage he is gifted with two thousand dollars , a dollar for every day served in prison. Meanwhile he aware his wife has been unfaithful with her lover . The outsider ex-POW reluctantly gets involved in assault by a gang of heinous murderous who torture him and threaten to murder his family that reveal the whereabout the money. After some hospitalization Charles Rane seeks revenge and battles corrupts killers. Then, he visits his partner (Tommy Lee Jones)to chase responsible for his wife and son's death. Rane is also helped by a beautiful waiter (Linda Haynes), cold-bloodedly Charles is thirsting for vengeance against vicious killers.

This is a tough , action filled, suspenseful, and violent thriller realistically narrated. It's a tense and engagingly movie , ignored in 1977, but now regarded as a top film of the decade of the 70s. Explosive finale in Sam Peckimpah style is violently carried out with bloody slow-moving images. Solid main cast, as William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones; furthermore veteran supporting cast helps with several known secondaries, such as Luke Askew,Dabney Coleman, James Best, among others . This well directed motion picture is based upon a plot by prestigious screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver). Atmospheric cinematography though is necessary a restoring and stirring musical score . Director John Flynn who gave magnificent performances to Rod Steiger (The sergeant), Jan-Michael Vincent(Defiance) , James Woods (Bestseller), and even Silvester Stallone (Lock-up) and Steven Seagal (Out of justice); here gave immense credibility to William Devane . Rating : Good, the result is a strong outing of action thriller genre.

Fmovies: 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.

I recently caught this semi-exploitative revenge flick on TV (Showtime), after wanting to see it for a while. Unfortunately, it's not on DVD and there's a good chance you're not going to find it on VHS (or laser disc) either, unless you go through eBay, maybe. Anyway, despite the fact that my first viewing of "Rolling Thunder" was in a modified format (unless the movie was shot in 1.33:1, which I doubt), I had a blast. William Devane is pretty great as the slightly psycho Vietnam vet who comes home to find that his small town life isn't waiting for him. And, of course, he goes *completely* psycho after...well, I won't spoil anything. Worth mentioning: this film is a big influence on Quentin Tarantino, who named his short-lived film release company after it (i.e. Rolling Thunder Pictures). What a shame that the company didn't survive long enough to re-release the film it's named for. If you're really into '70s cinema, action, sleaze, etc., you have to make an effort to see "Rolling Thunder". For real.

Rolling Thunder fmovies. 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.

The editor on this film, Frank P. Keller, died shortly after working on the film. He also was the editor on Bullitt. He won the Oscar for editing on that film. Rolling Thunder has a very strong and deliberate editing style and pace--it all hangs together very well--and the action cutting is very tight. The quick cutaways to the blue-tinted POW torture scenes work very well too. I think part of the reason this film is so cool is Keller's editing.

Boy, it's good to see a film one really likes that is just about unknown.....and read other reviewers who share your high opinion of that movie.

That's the case here in this simple revenge tale. My attraction to this film, outside of the interesting story, is the acting performance of William Devane, who plays the lead character. Seldom have I seen such a fascinating character.

Devane's character, "Major Charles Rane," had some interesting things to say BUT his silence was downright fascinating. Just the looks on his face and the absolute silence when his wife tells him she had been fooling around in his absence (when he had been suffering as POW, no less!) or when the robbers are giving him a horrible, sadistic beating. With the exception of one, maybe two outbursts, his language was surprisingly civil, too.

The movie had what I call "that gritty '70s look" to it but was well-filmed and probably would look very good on DVD. (We are still waiting for that to happen.) There were some solid closeup and shadow shots which added nicely to the neo-noir story. The violence is no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point and, with one exception at the end, realistically brutal........ but not overdone. The film starts slowly for the first 10-15 minutes but is a fast ride once the thieves enter the picture.

Co-star Linda Haynes reminded me of Tuesday Weld but not quite as pretty and a tiny bit harder looking. Nonetheless, she was an interesting new face and one I still don't recall ever seeing in any other film. It's also fun to see such a young Tommy Lee Jones.

Revenge movies can be a dime-a-dozen but this has at least one scene I guarantee you will never forget.