Rolling ThunderIn war, survival means adapting to your environment and circumstances while never losing sight of your mission. This necessitates a complete paradigm shift in your way of thinking. But when war is over, how do you return to the way things were? Can someone forced to reboot their whole personality even return at all? These questions represent the undercurrent beneath psychological thriller and revenge movie, Rolling Thunder, specifically concerning its protagonist--the recently freed Vietnam War POW, Major Charles "Charlie" Rane (William Devane)--and how life in "San Antone" has changed without him...and how he adapts to a tragedy.
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Rolling Thunder begins with a welcoming ceremony for Charlie--as well as his comrade-in-arms and fellow former POW, Master Sergeant Johnny Vohden (Tommy Lee Jones)--disembarking from a private jet in uniform, greeted by a marching band and the prisoners' families on the tarmac. Even though Charlie has been a captive of the Viet Cong for around seven years, this parade is meant to show that he has not been forgotten. The song that bookends Rolling Thunder is a folksy one called "San Antone" by Barry De Vorzon (uncredited), and is played at first to resemble a heartwarming paean to the city of San Antonio and Charlie's return to it as his home. But this quickly gets subverted, and instead it takes on a cynical and dark edge when it is played over the bloody credits scene. Rolling Thunder might be best described as a "slow burn"; that is, it appears at first to be a slow-paced drama about how Charlie adapts to civilian life back home, but over time it turns into an obsessive tale of violent retribution. It truly comes to a boiling point at the climax, and it's evident in the film's design--adapted from a screenplay by Paul Schrader, of Taxi Driver fame and more--that this is meant to build a kind of subconscious tension in the audience before the tragedy even starts. For more than the first thirty minutes of Rolling Thunder, there is rarely the suggestion of violence, much less violence at home. The primary drama comes by way of the revelation that Charlie's wife, Janet (Lisa Blake Richards), has not only had an affair with local police officer and family friend, Deputy Cliff Nichols (Lawrason Driscoll), but that they are engaged to be married. What this means is that the big show at the start of the film suggesting that no one back home has given up on Charlie is not entirely true. Charlie knows this deep down from the moment his plane lands. He adapts and puts on a brave face with chameleon-like aptitude. Charlie acts as the brave soldier who cannot be broken, but in reality he is a master at concealing his feelings, better than Johnny who is all but shaking when they land. Charlie's one prop to aid him in his overarching deception are a pair of aviator sunglasses. This speaks to an old adage about the "eyes being windows to the soul". Charlie hides his soul away from everyone...even himself.
The overt tragedy in Rolling Thunder is a home invasion turned multiple homicide. The first clue of this comes after--in a second welcome home festivity--Charlie is gifted a briefcase filled with over twenty-five hundred silver dollars from a local store, in recognition for each day he was imprisoned...plus one for "good luck". These are offered to him by a pretty young woman named Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes), who is a self-proclaimed "groupie" for Charlie. In fact, she isn't too subtle that she's got a yen for the returned war hero, and has for some time prior, having worn his "ID bracelet" since his departure. This raises some interesting questions about what "might" have been the outcome for Charlie and Linda given his impending divorce, but Rolling Thunder can only explore this so much before we have to satisfy the "revenge movie" criteria. Enter "The Acuna Boys", a quartet of murderous criminals hailing from Mexico who must have caught the broadcast of Charlie receiving the silver dollars...and more importantly, what he says he'll do with the money (i.e. "hide it"). Once the thieves ambush him in his home--totally unconcerned with him being a war hero or otherwise--it is here that Charlie makes a grave miscalculation. After years of enduring torture in Vietnam, Charlie tries the same stonewall act on these thugs, who have no interest in "breaking him"; they just want the money. It's true that they would very likely kill him and his family anyway, including his seven year old son, Mark (Jordan Gerler)...but maybe not. His resistance antagonizes them, and makes the process take longer than it would otherwise have if he just turned over the money he didn't truly care about in the first place. This delay is long enough for his wife and son to return home and be made into victims of these monsters as well. This isn't meant to imply that Charlie is to "blame" for their deaths, but his reaction to the tragedy is so extreme--to embark on a quest of revenge without shedding so much as tear--that it raises better questions about just what it is that truly motivates this broken man anymore. I say "broken" not as much by the lost of his wife and son, but from the war. From the start, Charlie is always wearing an emotional mask, despite Linda's best efforts to remove it. In fact, Charlie all but uses Linda and exploits her hero worship of him, since he needs an accomplice on his dark journey across the border. He offers her up as "bait" in so many ways, for which she rightfully chastises him on multiple occasions; and yet Charlie never seems to truly regret putting her in harm's way to achieve his goal. It's not so much that Charlie has become a monster like his quarry, but that he fails to relate to anyone anymore. It's almost arbitrary that he seeks revenge for his son--his "cheating wife" in his eyes is another story--because there is a pervading undercurrent that something like this was always inevitable with Charlie after coming home.
Recommended for: Fans of a gripping psychological thriller about a man broken by war falling ever farther into the darkness. Rolling Thunder starts out almost devoid of blood, gore, and gratuitousness, even modestly so during the home invasion. This makes the brutal shootout in the Mexican brothel at the end of the film all the more shocking--a set piece riddled with carnage and other graphic content.
The overt tragedy in Rolling Thunder is a home invasion turned multiple homicide. The first clue of this comes after--in a second welcome home festivity--Charlie is gifted a briefcase filled with over twenty-five hundred silver dollars from a local store, in recognition for each day he was imprisoned...plus one for "good luck". These are offered to him by a pretty young woman named Linda Forchet (Linda Haynes), who is a self-proclaimed "groupie" for Charlie. In fact, she isn't too subtle that she's got a yen for the returned war hero, and has for some time prior, having worn his "ID bracelet" since his departure. This raises some interesting questions about what "might" have been the outcome for Charlie and Linda given his impending divorce, but Rolling Thunder can only explore this so much before we have to satisfy the "revenge movie" criteria. Enter "The Acuna Boys", a quartet of murderous criminals hailing from Mexico who must have caught the broadcast of Charlie receiving the silver dollars...and more importantly, what he says he'll do with the money (i.e. "hide it"). Once the thieves ambush him in his home--totally unconcerned with him being a war hero or otherwise--it is here that Charlie makes a grave miscalculation. After years of enduring torture in Vietnam, Charlie tries the same stonewall act on these thugs, who have no interest in "breaking him"; they just want the money. It's true that they would very likely kill him and his family anyway, including his seven year old son, Mark (Jordan Gerler)...but maybe not. His resistance antagonizes them, and makes the process take longer than it would otherwise have if he just turned over the money he didn't truly care about in the first place. This delay is long enough for his wife and son to return home and be made into victims of these monsters as well. This isn't meant to imply that Charlie is to "blame" for their deaths, but his reaction to the tragedy is so extreme--to embark on a quest of revenge without shedding so much as tear--that it raises better questions about just what it is that truly motivates this broken man anymore. I say "broken" not as much by the lost of his wife and son, but from the war. From the start, Charlie is always wearing an emotional mask, despite Linda's best efforts to remove it. In fact, Charlie all but uses Linda and exploits her hero worship of him, since he needs an accomplice on his dark journey across the border. He offers her up as "bait" in so many ways, for which she rightfully chastises him on multiple occasions; and yet Charlie never seems to truly regret putting her in harm's way to achieve his goal. It's not so much that Charlie has become a monster like his quarry, but that he fails to relate to anyone anymore. It's almost arbitrary that he seeks revenge for his son--his "cheating wife" in his eyes is another story--because there is a pervading undercurrent that something like this was always inevitable with Charlie after coming home.
Recommended for: Fans of a gripping psychological thriller about a man broken by war falling ever farther into the darkness. Rolling Thunder starts out almost devoid of blood, gore, and gratuitousness, even modestly so during the home invasion. This makes the brutal shootout in the Mexican brothel at the end of the film all the more shocking--a set piece riddled with carnage and other graphic content.