|
|
TechnoTV - Rolling Thunder
|
List Price: $7.95
Our Price: $41.79
Your Save: $ ( % )
Availability:
Manufacturer: Good Times Video
Starring: William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes, James Best, Dabney Coleman
Directed By: John Flynn
|
Average Customer Rating:  
|
|
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Binding: VHS Tape
EAN: 9786303471617
Format: Color
ISBN: 6303471617
Label: Good Times Video
Manufacturer: Good Times Video
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Good Times Video
Release Date: 2001-05-15
Running Time: 95
Studio: Good Times Video
|
|
|
|
|
|
Spotlight customer reviews:
|
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Wish this was on DVD
Comment: In the 1970s, Hollywood came out with some "vengeance" movies. Another one that comes to mind is "The Farmer," which I saw with a group of buddies at the (Air Force) base theater.
Anyway, while "Rolling Thunder" might be short on military protocol (sloppy salutes and ill-fitting uniforms), it's long on what you would expect from this genre.
The bad guys are bad: Dirty rotten scoundrels in need of a shave and full of greed. They hang out in seedy bars and whorehouses and wear filthy shirts and have bad teeth. You get the sense that exterminating them is the right thing to do.
William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones are the anti-heroes. Icy cold. resolute and only after the bad guys. They don't lay a finger on a good guy.
The film slows down in a couple of parts, as it tries to give some depth to William Devane's character, mainly through his experiences as a POW -- recalled in black and white. I think the same scene was used repeatedly, which probably kept production costs down.
It should be noted that Vietnam War veterans were portrayed three different ways in Hollywood: First as deranged soul-less baby-killing whack jobs, then as disturbed whack jobs and finally as troubled men deserving of compassion. William Devane and Tommy Lee Jones are in the middle category (Magnum, P.I., was in the third category).
This movie is a lot of fun. My wife hates this film.
Customer Rating:
Summary: AWESOME!
Comment: A powerful film that cuts to the chase; pent up violence unleashed on the bad guys. Devane gives a solid performance, Jones is hard in his brief appearance towards the end of the movie. I saw the vhs version some years ago and was caught up in renting it because of the "Vietnam" reference; three tours spent in 'Nam which brought flashbacks. See this film if you haven't already because it is a headbanger! By the by, for all of you fans of this flick, it is available in dvd format via Ebay (up for bids).
Customer Rating:
Summary: deceptively simple revenge movie
Comment: WARNING: Spoilers follow
Plot-wise, this is your basic revenge story. But under the surface it is so much more. The first section of the film, nearly the first half, dealing with the homecoming of Major Charles Rane, a Viet Nam POW, is genuinely sad. 90% of "action" films not only do not choose this kind of tack, but are unable to bring it off. Rane finds that his wife has started a new relationship with another man who has also become a kind of step father to his son. The film portrays his reaction to this with painful ambiguity. He is reserved, and behaves well, but we sense a rage boiling just under the surface. Then later, he is robbed by a vicious gang and his wife and son killed. He takes up with a young "veteran groupie" who is infatuated with him and sets out on the road to find the killers. The girl tries to dissuade him from his mission and be happy with her. But he is clearly pushed into a state where human relationships are a thing of the past and he eventually cuts her loose. To those who say this is a "simple revenge story" I would ask, what would have happened if the robbery never occurred? he was already portrayed as emotionally fractured, and his life was already going down the drain. In a weird way the murders gave him his wish to return to a simpler, more violent way of being in the world. All the complications of the first half are erased. Later he "rescues" his friend played by Tommy Lee Jones from his own seething existence in an intolerably boring home life and the men engage in a gleefull bloodbath, ambushing and blowing away mostly unarmed, naked men in a whore house.
In my opinion this is a film about men, male bonding, the male violent impulse. Note that Rane tells Jones "I found the men who killed my son." Why doesn't he mention his wife who was also killed? When the two men leave in their uniforms, Jones' wife says "you never put on your uniform for me." Time and again the women in the film are portrayed as ousiders who don't get it. After what the men have been through, women are useless to them. Jones then says goodbye to his father but not his mother, wife or anyone else at the table. The connection with sex and violence is always present. The romantic scenes with Rane and his young girlfriend are given plenty of time to linger, and it's no accident that the final shootout occurs in a whore house amid fleeing nude women.
In my opinion the film is in the same league as Peckinpah's, it is portraying violence as something enduring, even when you take the circumstances, the robbery, even the Viet Nam war, away. It's a deeper statement about what men are, and, though it has B-movie elements, a work of art.
Customer Rating:
Summary: High class mayhem and revenge
Comment: I've loved this film since first seeing it in 1977 when its ending -- [...] -- made viewers and critics cringe with shock and horror. Violence plays a significant thematic and on-screen role in this flick about war, horror, remembrance and revenge.
Briefly submitted, William Devane and young Tommy Lee Jones (before he hit stardom) are returning Vietnam war prisoners of war. Devane, an officer in the Air Corps, had spent time in the famous Hanoi Hilton prison and has occasional flashbacks of his torture.
Returning war hero Devane -- whose wife took up with another guy during his lengthy absnece, adding real life drama and a soap operatic agenda to the movie -- receives a generous local gift during ceremonies in his Texas hometown. Later on, a bunch of good old boys come to rob him of the gift. They torture him and off his family in the process.
The remaining 70 or so minutes of the film detail Devane's search for the killers and his revenge. He takes up with a lonely woman during the search while teaching himself to use a shotgun with his new mechanical hand (he lost the real one in the torture-robbery-murder back home.)
When he finds the killers, he looks up Jones, who is about to have dinner at home with his wife, dad and some other family members. What comes next is one of the greatest lines in all of macho male cinema:
"I've located the men that killed my family," Devane says. "They're in a whorehouse down in (Mexico)."
"I'll just get my gear," Jones retorts.
There's not much left to the flick after that except a few minutes of outright mayhem that was probably among the best of its type in 1977. I recall another Vietnam-murder-revenge film of the era, "The Exterminator", which did this one better; but not many movies provided the kind of high class mayhem that goes on at the end of this movie.
"Rolling Thunder" was, of course, the military code name for the U.S. bombing program that helped kill up to 1 million Vietnamese during our undeclared war with that nation circa 1962-75. The signature has both metaphoric and visual meaning for this movie, which is about a raid of another type that results in a lot of casualties.
Anyone that likes either of the main actors, high class violence, or revenge films will enjoy this movie, that is apparently not available on DVD. I've seen it recently on digital cable so I assume it will make an appeareance on DVD soon if it's not there already.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Little known classic
Comment: I saw this movie over 15 years ago and certain images from it are still burnt into my mind. I was reminded of it recently when reading an article about Quentin Tarantino, which mentioned how he hosts screenings of his favourite movies at his home for close friends. Many of these films are out of print and very rare. Guess which one was among them? That's right, buddy. Which tells you something about the quality of this little-known gem. Starring the hugely under-rated William Devane, Rolling Thunder is an awesome revenge flick that will satisfy anyone with a fascination for sadistic violence. That being said, it ain't no gore-fest, rather the violence is portrayed from a psychological point of view, and the film is remarkably restrained, as is Devane's performance (Al Pacino, take note). I just have one question. WHY IS THIS FILM NOT AVAILABLE ON DVD? Someone needs to give it the treatment it deserves. Maybe Mr Tarantino will eventually champion its cause. For those of you who still have video recorders, this is the perfect way to kick back on Saturday night with a couple of cold ones and a big bowl of popcorn.
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
Rolling Thunder's ex-Vietnam War POW Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns to a hero's welcome in San Antonio in the early '70s. He's bestowed with a red Cadillac convertible, $2,500 in silver dollars, and accolades from all sides. Soon, however, he discovers that all is not as it seems; his wife strayed with a close friend during his years of confinement. He also finds that he has his own personal POW groupie, Linda; her fascination with him is met with the same shoulder-shrugging blandness that he shows toward everything else in what's left of his life. One day Rane comes home to find a houseful of assorted Texas white trash demanding his small fortune in silver dollars. Their efforts to beat him into revealing the location of the money are for naught, so they jam his right hand down a garbage disposal instead. When his wife and kid come home, the two gladly give up the money but the robbers cold-bloodedly gun them down anyway. Flash-forward: Rane has himself fitted with a hook prosthesis (which he sharpens on a grinder), cuts down a couple of shotguns, and points the scarlet Caddy land yacht south towards Nuevo Laredo, bent on revenge. With Linda in tow, he tracks the bad guys as far as Acuña and Juárez, where he hooks up with war buddy Johnny (Tommy Lee Jones) for a final showdown. What would otherwise play as a routine revenge story is given a measure of dimension and depth by Devane's performance and Paul Schrader's script. The comparison to Schrader scripts such as the previous year's Taxi Driver are inevitable and obvious. Like Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, Rane wears opaque state-trooper sunglasses that allow no window into his dead soul. However, Bickle's internal monologues are missing; all the audience can see of Rane's character is what's on the surface, only what Rane wants others to see. He's simply a vengeful automaton, riddled with a cold, poisonous, implacable rage. Strong stuff indeed. --Jerry Renshaw
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
