Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8261 in VHS
• Released on: 2001-05-15
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Formats: Color, Original recording reissued, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1

Amazon.com
Rolling Thunder's ex-Vietnam War POW Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns to a hero's welcome in San Antonio in the early '70s. He's bestowed with a red Cadillac convertible, $2,500 in silver dollars, and accolades from all sides. Soon, however, he discovers that all is not as it seems; his wife strayed with a close friend during his years of confinement. He also finds that he has his own personal POW groupie, Linda; her fascination with him is met with the same shoulder-shrugging blandness that he shows toward everything else in what's left of his life. One day Rane comes home to find a houseful of assorted Texas white trash demanding his small fortune in silver dollars. Their efforts to beat him into revealing the location of the money are for naught, so they jam his right hand down a garbage disposal instead. When his wife and kid come home, the two gladly give up the money but the robbers cold-bloodedly gun them down anyway. Flash-forward: Rane has himself fitted with a hook prosthesis (which he sharpens on a grinder), cuts down a couple of shotguns, and points the scarlet Caddy land yacht south towards Nuevo Laredo, bent on revenge. With Linda in tow, he tracks the bad guys as far as Acuña and Juárez, where he hooks up with war buddy Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones) for a final showdown. What would otherwise play as a routine revenge story is given a measure of dimension and depth by Devane's performance and Paul Schrader's script. The comparison to Schrader scripts such as the previous year's Taxi Driver are inevitable and obvious. Like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Rane wears opaque state-trooper sunglasses that allow no window into his dead soul. However, Bickle's internal monologues are missing; all the audience can see of Rane's character is what's on the surface, only what Rane wants others to see. He's simply a vengeful automaton, riddled with a cold, poisonous, implacable rage. Strong stuff indeed. --Jerry Renshaw

Customer Reviews

kicking ass one-handed
Paul Schrader is usually the man most prominently mentioned in connection with this film due to the fact that he also wrote TAXI DRIVER and as a result the contributions of co-screenwriter Heywood Gould & director John Flynn have been unfairly ignored. The look of the film is much better than the low production values would seem to permit and for that, I think,we can applaud cinematographer Jordan Crownenweth (who later lensed BLADE RUNNER for Ridley Scott.)

Director John Flynn shoots very classically; there are no swooping crane shots or steady-cams here,no slow-motion,just solid blocking of actors & their movements.

It is this last bit of stylistic non-excess that i think gives the film its power. Everything in the film, whether its someone having their hand ground up in a garbage disposal or telling a hooker, " I'm going to kill a bunch of people",is handled in a very matter-of-fact way and the cummulative effect is devastating.

One only needs to imagine how wretched this sort of film would be if it were re-made today to appreciate the no-nonsense, workman-like fashion in which it was created. One final note: the performances in this film are uniformly wonderful, with William Devane giving one of the best performances of his career, Tommy Lee Jones, in only a handful of scenes,showing why he later went on to greatness, and Linda Haynes who manages to be both heartbreakingly vulnerable and tough as nails without losing her ravaged beauty. The ending is justly famous for its ferocity and carnage but the impact is slightly muted by the too dark Vestron Video transfer that I saw. Why hasn't this been re-released on DVD? I happen to know that a new 35mm print was struck in 2002, so what gives? Quentin Tarantino liked this film so much he A) included it on his top ten all time favorites list and B) named his short-lived distribution company after it. Why he hasn't used his clout to get it out on DVD is anyone's guess but I'd sure like to hear a commentary track with,oh, lets say Tarantino, John Flynn and William Devane.

This is a classic of mid-70's cinema.

High class mayhem and revenge
I've loved this film since first seeing it in 1977 when its ending -- [...] -- made viewers and critics cringe with shock and horror. Violence plays a significant thematic and on-screen role in this flick about war, horror, remembrance and revenge.

Briefly submitted, William Devane and young Tommy Lee Jones (before he hit stardom) are returning Vietnam war prisoners of war. Devane, an officer in the Air Corps, had spent time in the famous Hanoi Hilton prison and has occasional flashbacks of his torture.

Returning war hero Devane -- whose wife took up with another guy during his lengthy absnece, adding real life drama and a soap operatic agenda to the movie -- receives a generous local gift during ceremonies in his Texas hometown. Later on, a bunch of good old boys come to rob him of the gift. They torture him and off his family in the process.

The remaining 70 or so minutes of the film detail Devane's search for the killers and his revenge. He takes up with a lonely woman during the search while teaching himself to use a shotgun with his new mechanical hand (he lost the real one in the torture-robbery-murder back home.)

When he finds the killers, he looks up Jones, who is about to have dinner at home with his wife, dad and some other family members. What comes next is one of the greatest lines in all of macho male cinema:

"I've located the men that killed my family," Devane says. "They're in a whorehouse down in (Mexico)."

"I'll just get my gear," Jones retorts.

There's not much left to the flick after that except a few minutes of outright mayhem that was probably among the best of its type in 1977. I recall another Vietnam-murder-revenge film of the era, "The Exterminator", which did this one better; but not many movies provided the kind of high class mayhem that goes on at the end of this movie.

"Rolling Thunder" was, of course, the military code name for the U.S. bombing program that helped kill up to 1 million Vietnamese during our undeclared war with that nation circa 1962-75. The signature has both metaphoric and visual meaning for this movie, which is about a raid of another type that results in a lot of casualties.

Anyone that likes either of the main actors, high class violence, or revenge films will enjoy this movie, that is apparently not available on DVD. I've seen it recently on digital cable so I assume it will make an appeareance on DVD soon if it's not there already.

If you are a fan of "Taxi Driver", you will love this one
Basic storyline is this. Major Charles Rane returns home, Texas, from seven years of torture in POW during Vietnam War. As a big welcome gift, he receives a Cadillac and a couple of thousands dollars from city. Charles soon finds out his wife fell in love with other man and his emotion starts to build up. Then people came after Charles' reward money kill his son and wife and Charles loses his hand. Charlie and his friend from the war, Johnny played by Tommy Lee Jones, get together for a revenge. I found out about this movie from the "King Pulp: The Wild World of Quentin Tarantino". The movie "Rolling Thunder" is written by Paul Schrader, writer from "Taxi Driver". Like "Taxi Driver", this movie is charged with gripping scripts and emotionally rich and powerful characters. Without showing any real battle scenes, the movie builds up very strong Vietnam war drama. Also, the sequence where Major Charles Rane (William Devane) drives to find killers of his son and wife with a girl reminds the stoyline of "Natural Born Killers". Performance by Tommy Lee Jones as a supporting actor is also interesting to look at. This movie is as powerful and brutal as "Taxi Driver".