Rolling Thunder

It is no accident that John Flynn’s film is reminiscent of Taxi Driver – both films were based on Paul Schrader scripts (Schrader wrote the original story for this and gets a co-scriptwriter credit with Heywood Gould) and both deal with Vietnam vets failing to reintegrate back into mainstream society.  Unfortunately Flynn is no Martin Scorsese and William Devane is no Robert DeNiro. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the film is doomed but after a decent beginning Rolling Thunder degenerates into a shoddy B-grade exploitation film.

Major Charles Rane (Devane) returns from a Vietnam P.O.W. camp to a hero's welcome in his home town of San Antonio, Texas. Suffering from what  these days is called post-traumatic stress syndrome he is having trouble relating to his family, with his son, whom he last saw when  had been a baby, being closer to his mother’s friend, a local cop (Lawrason Driscoll) whom it transpires she wants to marry.

That’s pretty hard on a guy but then a gang of low-lives turn up wanting some of the money Rane received as a gift from local businesses. Flipping back into his P.O.W. mode, Rane refuses to cooperate so the low-lives shove his hand down a kitchen waste disposal unit and shoot dead his wife and child.  When he recovers, the now one-handed Rane sets off to get his revenge.

Rolling Thunder has attracted a cult following although for no apparent reason other than the basic appeal of any film dealing with vigilante justice. Devane appeared regularly in support roles around this period but a De Niro or Jack Nicholson, with whom he bears some physical resemblance he is not, nor a Clint Eastwood another actor whose phlegmatic presence  might have made this role work.  It is true that Rane is supposed to be “empty” but Devane’s interpretation of that emotional condition is simply to react to nothing whatsoever.  In the case of the advances of a local barmaid (Linda Haynes) that is perhaps comprehensible but not to having your hand chewed off in a mincer or seeing your wife and child murdered.

What John Flynn offers us instead of credible psychological characterisation is your stock-in-trade, el cheapo revenge scenario as Rane picks up his Vietnam buddy, Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones), and goes about "killing a bunch of people", as the similarly traumatized Johnny puts it.  Not only is the climactic massacre surprisingly uninspired but the whole second half of the movie suffers from gaping plot holes.  Rane not only inexplicably knows the names of his assailants but finds them with extraordinary ease. He nails one in the testicles with his hook but that guy turns up later on apparently no worse for wear.  There’s a sub-plot involving the local cop coming to avert him from his self-ordained mission that never connects to the main story and a scene setting up Rane’s barmaid companion as a probable shoot-out buddy that comes to nought.

Impossible to take seriously, too serious to be fun, Rolling Thunder is Taxi Driver for lunkheads.
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