Rolling Thunder Reviews

Hot on the heels of TAXI DRIVER came a new film penned by its prolific screenwriter (soon to be director), Paul Schrader, and shot on a shoestring by in Texas by director John Flynn. ROLLING THUNDER stars Devane (in a superb performance) as a Vietnam POW who, after years in captivity, is returned home along with cellmate Jones. Devane is given a hero's welcome by his little Texas town and presented with a small fortune in silver dollars--one for each day he was a prisoner. While all this attention is heartwarming, he has also come home to a wife who no longer loves him, a son who doesn't remember him, and a society that doesn't understand him. Emotionally deadened by his wartime experiences ("You learn to love the pain," the vet ominously tells his wife's lover), Devane only comes alive after his wife and son are killed by thieves who invade their home to steal the silver coins. The thugs try to torture information out of Devane by shoving his hand down a garbage disposal, but he refuses to break--a macho display that brings about his family's deaths. Fitted with a hook to replace his mangled hand, Devane, with the help of his former comrade Jones, goes to Mexico in search of vengeance. While ROLLING THUNDER suffers from Schrader's predictable obsessions with masculine ritual and gunplay, Devane and Jones enhance the material with their nuanced, sensitive portrayals of men who have lost their souls in another land. The scenes of their attempted readjustment are unforgettable, especially those in which the obviously tormented Jones rots away in the bosom of his stiflingly polite family, who refuse to discuss the war with him. Aside from TAXI DRIVER, this is probably the best of the shortlived Vietnam vet-as-vigilante subgenre, which also included GOOD GUYS WEAR BLACK (1979) and THE EXTERMINATOR (1980).