Rolling Thunder, directed by John Flynn and based on Paul Schrader’s original script, is a 1970s revenge-o-matic exploitation thriller that deftly examines the psychological effects of the Vietnam War on American soldiers.
In 1973, following seven years of imprisonment at the Hanoi prison during the Vietnam War, Colonel Charles Rane (William Revane), his Army Master Sargeant John Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones), and two other troops return home to San Antonio. Rane finds it challenging to adjust to the family he has already left. His eight-year-old son barely recognizes him, and his wife is in a relationship with another guy, Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll), whom she plans to marry. At a grand homecoming ceremony, Texan Belle Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes) presents Rane with a Cadillac and a box containing 2,555 silver dollars, each signifying a day he spent as a POW. As Rane returns home one day, he finds a group of greedy border outlaws inside the house. They demand the silver dollar box, but in the process, they murder his wife and child and mutilate his hand. As a result, Rane seeks and enlists the assistance of his army buddy, John, for a showdown with the gangsters who destroyed his life.
Rolling Thunder’s first half effectively sheds light on Charles Rane’s character. Upon landing in America, he finds it challenging to adapt to domestic life. As if the seven years of suffering weren’t enough, his wife surprises him by announcing that she has been having an affair with Cliff and wants a divorce, exacerbating his misery even more. Rane stoically accepts the situation with his wife and decides to dedicate his time to getting to know his child better. This is demonstrated in a scene where Cliff introduces himself to Rane. Rather than intimidating, Rane acts cool about the whole thing and politely instructs him to refrain from referring to his son as a “Runt.” In addition, he is coping with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the horrific events he experienced during the war; the match-cuts between him sitting in various postures at home in the dark and flashbacks to his time in prison brilliantly emphasize this point.
The film takes a violent turn when four thugs attack Rane and his family. The robbers appear to be complete dimwits; they mug a war veteran for just $2500 and then torture him to reveal the location of the stash, even though they are aware he has been tortured for seven years prior. They mutilate his hand by shoving it in the garbage disposal. Still, he doesn’t utter a single word and seems to even find some sadistic pleasure in it as memories of his torture in Vietnam flood back. However, out of fear, his son reveals the location of the stash. After getting the money and shooting the wife and child, but before shooting Rane, these idiots discuss their meeting location right in front of him. So, when Rane survives, he obviously goes after them. As a result, the entire sequence, which kicks off the film’s crime angle, lacks the impact and tension that would have made the revenge angle stronger, and the villains don’t seem too compelling or formidable; instead, they come across as just a bunch of goofballs with a penchant for violence.
Rane displays little to no emotion following the loss of his family. There is not a single quiet moment of introspection on his part, which could be because his experience in Vietnam has left him utterly numb on the inside or because he doesn’t feel any connection to either his wife (who has decided to leave him) or his son (who barely recognizes him). This raises the question of why he chooses to go on a revenge spree. Perhaps more than seeking revenge for his family, he is still consumed by thoughts of war; the four thugs’ attack has put him in a position where he can once again enter the war, hunt down his enemies, and kill them all. Similarly, John’s mindset is that of someone who hasn’t adjusted to domestic life. In the scene where Rane visits his house and announces that he has located the individuals responsible for his family’s murder, John states without hesitation, “I’ll get my gear.”
The film’s action scenes are visceral and bloody, and they are shot with the intention of making them as realistic as possible, particularly the climactic sequence, which is very similar, albeit less gory, to the climactic action sequence in Taxi Driver (1976). Furthermore, Rolling Thunder benefits from the presence of Linda Forchet’s character, who emerges as the voice of reason and the only sane character in the film. Linda is smitten with Rane, but he is so cut off from human contact and humanity that he finds it difficult to reciprocate her feelings. She has grown tired of surrounding herself with bad and crazy men her whole life and believes Rane is not one of them. However, she eventually learns that her guess is utterly wrong; Rane is actually on a suicide revenge mission and has taken her along to use her as a pawn in his search for the men he wants. Their road trip together delves into her character and highlights how Rane has moved past the stage where he can form a meaningful relationship.
Paul Schrader penned the original screenplay for Rolling Thunder as a companion piece to Taxi Driver (1976). In the former, the protagonist, Colonel Charles Rane, shares traits with Travis Bickle, a white trash racist, much like how Schrader portrayed Bickle in his screenplay. In Schrader’s version, Rane becomes a war hero and returns to confront the Texan-Mexican community, where his inner racist emerges, owing primarily to his upbringing and the hatred he developed while in Vietnam. He begins slaughtering and killing Mexicans, which was meant as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. However, the studio scrapped this original version of Rolling Thunder, just as they scrapped his original version of Taxi Driver, and while the final cut of the former is not perfect, it is still an intriguing piece of exploitation cinema from the 1970s.
Rolling Thunder movie links: Letterboxd, Wikipedia
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