Rolling Thunder

Summary

“Learn to love the rope.”

The seventies were an amazing period for film. Lucas, Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg all cut their teeth with some of their strongest work. Clint Eastwood and the Dirty Harry films captured the attention of theatre goers, and so did Charles Bronson’s turn as a vigilante in Death Wish. Crime and justice were on the minds of theater goers as the Vietnam War came to a close, the Watergate scandal gripped the nation, and cities like New York and Detroit experienced some historically bad crime activity. Death Wish and Dirty Harry paved the way so that inexpensive but effective action films like Rolling Thunder could be given the green light with the expectation that the film would easily make back its budget by playing the drive-ins and grindhouse circuit. The Seventies weren’t just incredible for the fantastic output, but also for the sheer variety of output. Rolling Thunder is an excellent example of a film that has conflicting ideas at the core of what the film aims to accomplish, yet still becomes something incredibly memorable. Directed by John Flynn, the film’s revenge plot is directed with efficacy and an eye towards ugly realism. I was excited to revisit the film on Shout! Factory’s new 4K UHD release.

The plot of the film is fairly straight forward: Airforce Major Charles Rane (William Devane) has just returned from the Vietnam war to San Antonio, Texas. The year is 1973. When Major Rane returns home he has been changed by the war. On the exterior, he is calm and deliberate in his actions. On the inside, he has been changed due to the severe torture he has received at the hands of his captors in a POW camp. The world that he left behind has also changed in his absence. His wife has been seeing a local sheriff named Cliff (Lawrason Driscoll), and wants a divorce. The toddler he left behind has grown into a boy who does not have any memories of him at all. Confronted with the pending divorce by his wife, Major Rane does not become upset and simply wants to be part of the boy’s life. He seeks no revenge on Cliff for taking his woman while he was away. Rane just wants to sit there in the dark with a beer and let things be. He emanates a strange aura of rage while not doing anything outside of remaining silent or courteous. In the meantime, he has become a bit of a local celebrity due to his service. The kind folks of San Antonio pitch in and buy him a red Cadillac and present him with a case of twenty five hundred silver dollars – one silver dollar for every day he was away. Unfortunately, some particularly nasty Texans find out about the case of silver dollars and decide to take it from him. During a home invasion, Rane is left for dead with a horrible injury, and his family is forever impacted. He recuperates at the local hospital and upon his release he begins his quest for revenge. Rane enlists the help of Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes) a barmaiden that has been entranced by him since he left for the war, to help him find the men that did him harm across the border in Mexico. He also enlists the help of Johnny Vohden (a young Tommy Lee Jones,) a veteran that was in the POW camps with him, to help dispatch the men that took everything from him.

Essentially Rolling Thunder is a revenge story, and some of the actions in the film make it a very good revenge story, but the movie is also extremely strange. The original screenwriter of the film was Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver) and his original script was about a prisoner of war who comes back from Vietnam and becomes increasingly racist against Mexicans until it leads to a massacre in a brothel across the border. Parts of this story are still certainly there, but this version of the script was much tougher on the troops that were coming back from the war. The studios decided that was a little too out there, so John Flynn enlisted Heywood Gould, a patriotic Vietnam veteran, to touch up the script. He made the film’s protagonist much more patriotic. This causes tonal issues that actually make the film much more interesting. Decoding exactly what Rolling Thunder aims to achieve with its story is part of the fun. 

I really enjoyed both Tommy Lee Jones and William Devane’s performances in this film. William Devane manages to portray simmering rage underneath his cordial veneer. Tommy Lee Jones nails his role as a troop who is ready to fight whenever called to do so. James Best is great as the ringleader of the robbers. Luke Askew memorably plays the perfectly named Automatic Slim. Linda Haynes is good in her role as well. All of the acting choices make perfect sense in a movie that is a bizarre juxtaposition of two different styles of writing. Under strong direction by John Flynn which leans into realism without any gloss, Rolling Thunder becomes something that I find extremely rewatchable. I had not rewatched Rolling Thunder in a few years, and my opinion of the film has only improved. I like to think of this film as a perfect middle point between Paul Schrader’s script for Hardcore and Paul Schrader’s script for Taxi Driver. Thematically all of these films share certain aspects (Hardcore has the father looking for justice for his child, Taxi Driver has a climatic shootout that is very similar to Rolling Thunder’s,) and watching the film with those in mind makes it even more interesting. It would have been interesting to watch Schrader’s original vision, but I really liked the final product that John Flynn ended up with.

I still get a great laugh that the studio chose to have Denny Brooks sing a melodramatic song called “San Antone” in the Glen Campbell style to open and close the film. The juxtaposition of that song with the movie’s violence is bizarre and for some reason makes me enjoy the film even more. Quentin Tarantino loved this film so much that he named his film distribution company Rolling Thunder Pictures back in the Nineties. I remember seeing that logo on a VHS copy of Chungking Express way back when. Fans of revenge films will definitely want to check out Rolling Thunder, especially with Shout! Factory’s attractive new 4K release.

Video

Rolling Thunder has been given a true 4K UHD upgrade from Shout! Factory. Their prior release over a decade ago left a little to be desired in terms of its visual presentation. Given the grittiness of the picture, it did not work against the film too much, but there was definitely room for improvement. The new 4K transfer from the original camera negative does not suffer from any of the color timing fluctuations that affected the prior Blu-ray release. Color is stable and seems to accurately represent the filmmaker’s original intentions. Presented in Dolby Vision and HDR, the film has certainly never looked better. Grain is well resolved. The film is very darkly lit at times, and the new 4K presentation handles that darkness as well as it can. Rolling Thunder never was and never will be a “pretty” film, but this is a great looking presentation overall.

Audio

The original mono mix is presented in DTS HD. I personally think that the mix sounds pretty good. Gun shots are sufficiently loud. The final shoot out is fun if not extremely dynamic. The “San Antone” song sounds just as out of place now as it did then. People who love the film will enjoy this mix, which does not suffer any problems with clarity that I noticed.

Supplements:

4K Disc:

• New Audio Commentary With Screenwriter/Novelist Heywood Gould And Author/Film Historian C. Courtney Joyner
• New Audio Commentary With Filmmakers Jackson Stewart And Francis Galluppi

Blu-Ray Disc:

• New Audio Commentary With Filmmakers Jackson Stewart And Francis Galluppi
• “Lean And Mean: The Early Films Of John Flynn” – A brand new interview With Author/Film Historian C. Courtney Joyner in which the filmmaker discusses the realistic approach that John Flynn took towards his early works. This is an enjoyable discussion of the filmmaker.
• “Coming Home To War: Scoring Rolling Thunder” – A brand new interview with composer Barry De Vorzon who discusses his work on the film.
• The Making of Rolling Thunder – this fun but brief piece from the Blu-ray release features interviews with Devane, Jones, Gould, and Schrader. All of them talk about their opinions of what the film is and how the film turned out. This piece was great, and I only wish it could have been expanded.
• Trailers from Hell – Eli Roth talks about the film over its trailer.
• Theatrical Trailer
• TV Spot
• Radio Spots
• Photo Gallery

Overall Scores:

Video – 4.5/5

Audio – 3.5/5

Supplements – 4/5

Overall – 4.25/5

Rolling Thunder is a really solid revenge picture from the Seventies. The film’s script is fascinating because of the dualing mindsets of screenwriters Heywood Gould and Paul Schrader. As it stands, the picture works because of John Flynn’s down and dirty direction and a strong performance of simmering rage by William Devane. Tommy Lee Jones, James Best, Luke Askew, and Linda Haynes are all well cast as well. I think if you watched Rolling Thunder in a room with thirty people you would get thirty different reactions as to what exactly this film is, which adds to the allure of teh picture. Shout! Factory has done a great job on the new 4K transfer from the original camera negative, and the new supplements are enjoyable. If you are a fan of the film, this is well worth adding to your collection. This 4K release is a significant upgrade for a deserving picture. Highly recommended.