A Vietnam veteran, Charles Rane, returns home after years in a POW camp and is treated as a hero. When thugs invade his home to steal the silver coins he received for his service, they mangle his hand and leave him and his family for dead. Rane survives and becomes obsessed with getting revenge. Aided by his loyal friend Johnny Vohden, Rane, now wielding a hook for a hand, sets out on his mission of vengeance.
William Devane Tommy Lee Jones Linda Haynes James Best Dabney Coleman Lisa Blake Richards Luke Askew Lawrason Driscoll James Victor Cassie Yates Jordan Gerler Jane Abbott Jerry Brown Jacque Burandt Anthony Castillo Charles Escamilla Rudy T. Gonzales Robert K. Guthrie Ray Gutierrez Randy Mark Herman Michael Nakamura Pete Ortega Paul A. Partain James Conner Pribble Cheyenne Rivera Carol Sowa Robert Raymond Reyes Arturo R. Tamez Jr. Bob Tisdale Show All…
滚雷, Légitime violence, Der Mann mit der Stahlkralle, El ex-preso de Corea, רעם מתגלגל, Mennydörgés, Bez slitování, Несдържан гняв, Гремящий гром, 符碌奇兵, A Outra Face da Violência, 롤링 썬더, ローリング・サンダー, Kulisty Piorun, Гуркіт грому
USAR
(New York City, New York)
USAR
Sweden15
AustraliaR 18+
France16
Japan
Netherlands16
Portugal
Philippines
Germany16
Colombia
Spain
Italy
AustraliaR 18+
France12
Australia
Colombia
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Philippines
Portugal
Spain
Sweden
USA
“It’s like my eyes are open and I’m looking at you, but I’m dead.”
Psssh and people say we’ve never gotten a good Punisher movie.
A rough-around-the-edges 70s revenge flick starring William Devane as a Vietnam POW who returns home to no longer recognize the world around him — or maybe it’s the world who no longer recognizes him. Made numb by war and his years of torture, Maj. Charles Rane is a detached father and husband, but longs to reclaim the life and humanity that he left behind. However, in standard 70s grimehouse fashion, darkness soon rears its ugly head and tragedy befalls the Rane family. Unfortunately for the perpetrators of the atrocities, Charlie never really left the war…
I plopped on my couch expecting a meat and potatoes '70s exploitation action picture about a 'Nam vet with a hook hand, but did not brace myself for Rolling Thunder to go Paul Schrader dark. What an icky sweat soaked screaming surprise! This plays like a bleak and gritty character driven modern western with some stunning photography and chilling performances. The shadowy torture/interrogation scene left me shook! And the way Tommy Lee Jones says, "I'll get my gear" with that blank stare. Brrrr!
A portrait of a man slipping off the edge in typical Schrader scripted fashion, Rolling Thunder feels like a countryfied genre slathered shell shocked cousin to Taxi Driver. 2017 is off to a stellar cinestart!
You can take the man out of the war but you can't take the war out of the man. One of Schrader's many lonely, isolated, tortured character studies taken to some cathartically gruesome revenge-action extremes by Flynn who’s just one the most effectively spare, blunt-force filmmakers around at this type of thing. Devane gives one of the best psychotic, dead-behind-the-eyes chameleon pretending to be a real person performances ever and young Tommy Lee Jones in this should be in the canon of sad 70s hot guys. The final shootout is one of the straight-up nastiest of its era, and even more perverse when you realize the larger idea being worked through here is one of violence as a bonding or healing tool for a traumatized generation of men. "I'll just get my gear."
Quentin Tarantino just made me watch this and that’s just about the most Cannes thing I’ve ever said
The walking dead on dark glasses masks. The world spites on them and they just react back with equal bluntness. Everything reduced to one large grind machine dead set on waste all. John Flynn and Paul Schrader, both sort of American bressonians of rather different stripes, are good match: Schrader gives Flynn more subtext to chew on, while Flynn no bullshit pragmatism cuts some of his writer's usual excesses. Flynn sparse direction and great sense of camera placement was rarely put to such good use and Wlliam Devane and Tommy Lee Jones are wonderful unhuman.
As bleak as they get when it comes to revenge-o-matics, John Flynn & Paul Schrader’s “Vetsploitation” is a haunting, slow burn but brutal AIP production that pulls no punches thanks to a sobering, almost cold-to-the-hook performance by William Devane who walks around like a PTSD zombie until he’s…PUSHED…TOO…FAR.
It’s almost purely melodrama till the third act when shit hits the fan and many bullets fly.
Tommy Lee Jones and his unibrow is a POWERHOUSE by the final siege/shootout.
Also: Dabney Coleman Bomb!
This doesn’t quite live up to Quentin Tarantino’s tribute in his book. Final shootout aside, it’s not quite as lurid or as tough as I expected from Tarantino’s breathless descriptions. (He’s a better salesman than a critic in this case.) The performances are as good as advertised though, especially Linda Haynes as poor Linda Forchet, doomed to follow this broken vet around South Texas. The final scene from the script that Tarantino describes in Cinema Speculation would have probably bumped this one up at least half a star for me. Too bad they ran out of time to shoot it.
83
"I don't think I'm up for any more of this. Why don't you go to bed? We'll work this all out."
"What are you gonna do?"
"I'm just gonna sit here."
Revenge-exploitation that wallows in the pain of non-existence. William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, and Linda Haynes are magnetic.
I know this was made in a time when "made for TV" wasn't nearly as disrespectful as it would later become, but this feels really made for TV for a solid half of the film.
The pacing is off, and feels longer than thy film's 100 minutes. I contemplated going down to 2.5 ☆.
Until the ending, which absolutely kicks ass. It makes the rest of the film totally worth the wait, but it's still not the classic that its TOTALLY KICKASS NAME makes you think it will be.
