In director John Flynn’s Rolling Thunder (1977), Major Charles Rane (William Devane) has just come home to San Antonio after eight years of hell as a POW. Beset with PTSD, he’s in a rut—unable to connect with his wife and son.
He might be the walking dead.
Or he is, until a vicious Tex-Mex gang, the Acuna Boys, kills his family in a home invasion robbery. An attack that leaves Rane with a hook for a hand (the Boys stuff his real paw in the garbage disposal).
Buy Rolling Thunder 4K UHDWith help from his former cellmate (Tommy Lee Jones) and a cocktail waitress (Linda Haynes), Rane scouts the border in a red Cadillac, the trunk full of guns.
His revenge may resurrect him.
The entire cast is superb. Paul Schrader (of Taxi Driver fame) conceived the story and wrote the original script. Heywood Gould (and an uncredited Devane) rewrote it but kept the basic shape. In his appreciation of the film in his book Cinema Speculation, director Quentin Tarantino opines that the Gould-Devane version sings, but the Schrader draft has moments of brilliance that could have raised the film to crazier heights. Regardless—I love this movie.
Rolling Thunder has a brisk quality that’s both haunting and easy to cheer. Flynn, also known for his excellent work on 1973’s The Outfit, glazes the movie with a taut, somber finish. The first half or so of the film is a straightforward depiction of benumbed reintegration. And Flynn’s in the race for the B-movie hall of fame—when it doesn’t stew, the movie cooks with exploitative zeal, capping things off with a high-octane shootout.
A different (artier, or tamer) sensibility behind the camera could have ruined the movie.
As it stands, Rolling Thunder is great trash—the definitive vetspoitation film.
The new 2-disc 4K UHD/Blu-ray set from Shout Select is a fine tribute. The 4K on disc one is a new transfer from the original 35mm negative. This disc also has new audio commentary by Gould and author-film historian C. Courtney Joyner, and by filmmakers Jackson Stewart and Francis Galluppi. The Blu-ray uses the same restoration and features the same commentary tracks, plus a new interview with Joyner on Flynn’s filmography, an interview with composer Barry De Vorzon, and an older making-of documentary that has interviews with Devane, Jones, Schrader, and Gould. This disc also has a Trailers from Hell segment with director Eli Roth, plus the film’s theatrical trailer, TV spot, and radio spots. The Blu-ray also has a stills gallery.
