I've decided to go back
over some of my older reviews and redo them as when I started this
site I was still finding my feet. With this new format that I’ve
decided on, I think revisiting some older reviews is a good idea
seeing as I’ve seen some of these films again and feel that I can
maybe elaborate more on the themes and such that go on in the film.
So my re-do is for the epically awesome and actually rather down beat
Rolling Thunder.
During the 70s you had
the exploitation boom and one particular sub genre of action and
thriller was the revenge movie, sure the 80s had a lot of revenge
movies but the 70s gave us a grittier less cartoonish vision of
revenge. One of the best example of 70s revenge is Death Wish by
Michael Winner and even to an extent Straw Dogs which becomes a sort
of proto revenge film, but for me one film which is always over
looked is the very very good Rolling Thunder. Rolling Thunder came
out at a time when the Vietnam war was still fresh in peoples minds.
POW's were getting released and trying to adjust to civilian life
after the torture of being kept prisoner. In this film, we follow a
character by the name of Charles Raine, a man kept in prison for 7
years and returning home a hero, although he doesn't think he's a
hero. After arriving on an air strip with a fellow prisoner, Johnny,
played by a young Tommy Lee Jones, Raine discovers that over the 7
years he's been imprisoned, his wife has taken up with the local
sheriff as she presumed he was dead, not only this but he's award a
case full of silver dollars for everyday he was imprisoned and a red
convertible. This is presented to him at a ceremony by a young woman
named Linda. Upon returning home, Raine is confronted in his home by
a gang of thugs intent on stealling the silver dollars as they total
just of 2.5K. Raine resists and his wife and child are murdered, the
finish the invasion of his home buy taking his hand. After leaving
the hospital a few weeks later, Raine decided to track the thugs down
and kill them one by one with the help of Linda and Johnny which
culminates in a brutal shoot out in a bar/brothel on the U.S/Mexico
border.
Rolling Thunder isn't
your average revenge movie, it comes from a script by Paul Schrader
(Taxi Driver/Hardcore) and Heywood Gould (Boys From Brazil). With
Schrader on board you can guarantee this film is going to have some
semblance of a narrative plot and will definitely veer towards the
bleak, downbeat end of the screen writing spectrum. Some scenes are
very dificult to watch such as the scene in which Raine gets his
wife's new boyfriend to tie his arms behind him and raise the rope,
which was some form of torture Raine endured during his imprisonment,
twice a day every day for the seven years in captivity. This scene is
a tough watch but it's made all the more uncomfortable thanks to the
dedicated performance of William Devane. Originally the film was to
star Kris Kristofferson in the role of Charles Raine but he dropped
out and Devane was cast. Devane is incredible in the film, he's
virtually silent through out the film and the way he reacts to
everything around him, be it coming home from the war and everyone
worshipping him as a hero while they forget about the many men who
lost their lives during 'Nam or the realisation that he's never met
his son and that his wife has moved on, Devane shows near enough no
emotion but after his family are killed you know that all that
emotion has built up inside him and the only way to let it out is to
do what he was trained to do and what he's good at...Killing People.
It's a very powerful role and Devane captures the intensity and
mental anguish of Raine almost flawlessly. By not your average
revenge movie, I mean, the incident doesn't happen at the start of
the film, it takes near enough 30-40 minutes before Raine looses his
hand, the first half is more about him coming to terms with being
back home and is more drama than anything else. Most revenge films
have the incident within the first 15-20 minutes as they set up the
main character, Death Wish does it and most 80s movies do it. Rolling
Thunder is kind of like The Deer Hunter at the start, it's slow burn,
quiet and interesting to watch until the moment when something
happens and you know the film is going to end in a hail of bullets,
for that I applaud the film as stays well away from gratuity and
excess and sticks closer to a character piece. Devane gets some very
good support from Linda Haynes as the girl who presented him with the
dollars and the car, they start to form a bond as she joins him on
his journey and tries to uncover how deep his mental instability goes
as he uses her as bait to catch the thugs. She falls for him but
can't help feeling that he's heading down a road of self destruction.
Tommy Lee Jones, much like Devane's character, finds it very very
difficult to adjust to civilian life, his family and how he longs to
be doing what he does best and when Raine comes calling for help in
tracking down the last of thugs, Johnny comes alive. He steps out of
the depressing shell that he's inhabited since returning home and
becomes who he was again and he seems to love killing people, not in
a psychotic lunatic sort of way but in a way in which he feels at
home, he feels more like him self than as the person he was before
the war.
For a film that focuses
on violence, it's less about the acts and more about the build up but
when the shit does hit the fan, the violence is brutal and
unflinching. Certain scenes are menacing such as the initial home
invasion in which Raine is forced to watch his family die only to
follow that with loosing his hand and being left for dead. Paul
Schrader is well known for his unflinching depictions of violence
which is more than evident in his Taxi Driver script and the script
for Hardcore that incorporates sexual violence, here though, the
violence is more quick and brutal than focused on even though you
know the film is building up to the violent gun battle. The direction
by underrated helmer John Flynn is good, it's well shot and handled
and Flynn has a great eye for action scenes. He went on to helm
Stallone's Lock Up and Steven Seagal's brutally violent actioner Out
For Justice. Flynn sadly passed away in 2007 but left a legacy of
underrated gems behind.
For the sub genre that
this film falls into, its a shame that it's never had the recognition
it deserves, it's a brilliantly conceived revenge drama that doesn't
rely on sleaze or exploitative violence to push it's narrative along,
focusing more on the character development and the experiences of
Vietnam vets. It could have turned into a dirty grindhouse movie if
it was in the hands of the trash peddlers of he 70s but the script
from Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould raise it above the usual sleazy
violence that most 70s and 80s revenge movies suffered from. I hate
it when people refer to this film as grindhouse movie because it's so
much more. It's more a character movie. I get enjoyment from it
everytime I see it and I think that William Devane's impeccable
performance is what really keeps me coming back. Luckily for the U.K
we have this available on a double play blu-ray and while the
transfer it's self isn't anything spectacular, for a film that was
for the most part completely unavailable in the U.K, it's pretty damn
good. So if you've not seen this film, then I urge you to track this
down A.S.A.P.
Words: Peter W. Osmond
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