“Good to be back. We knew all along that everyone back home from the President on down was behind us 100%. It was God and faith in our families that kept us going. Speaking for myself, I’d like to say that the whole experience has made a better man, a better officer, and a better American out of me. Thank you very much.”
It started in the 1970’s just as the long and costly war in Vietnam was finally coming to a close. The conscience of the American people shifted from trying to stop the war to the soldiers who were now coming home and mourning the ones who didn’t. There was also this group that fell somewhere in between. It took a long time to get the North Vietnamese to even acknowledge the number of POW’s still held in captivity and the push was to bring them home. Suddenly Hollywood was on the bandwagon, and there appeared the war sub-genre that focused on these returnees, particularly those held prisoner. Films Like Missing In Action brought the subject to the front of moviegoers’ attention, and other films like The Deer Hunter gave us a look at the psychological damage many returned to be haunted by. One writer who had already reached into that dark place of the mind was Paul Schrader, who penned Taxi Driver. His followup, which was actually intended to link to Taxi Driver, was Rolling Thunder, and while not the same level of classic cinema, it’s an important film that Shout Factory has allowed us a detailed look at with the release of Rolling Thunder on UHD Blu-ray in 4K.
Rolling Thunder had a long and twisted journey to the big screen. American International Pictures was the first to acquire the rights to the film in 1973. It was bought with the expectation that writer Paul Schrader would also direct the film. When that didn’t work, George Romero was approached, and that idea never got off the ground. When Lawrence Gordon left AIP, he took the film with him, and the rights eventually went to Columbia Pictures. The film languished until the rights expired and ended up at 20th Century Fox, who finally made the film with Robert Wise student John Flynn. The film finally got made but would encounter even more trouble. A test screening of the film was a disaster. It rated the worst violence score ever for a test audience, and it scared the crap out of Fox. They tried to get changes to the film, but that didn’t work out either. They approached a board of psychologists who viewed the film and labeled it dangerously disturbing. That was it for Fox, and they wanted out. In a odd bit of irony, the film ended up back at American International Pictures where the whole thing had started five years earlier. When you watch it today, you’ll likely have a hard time understanding what the fuss was about. It’s certainly tame by today’s standards. Now you can see for yourself.
It’s 1973, and a plane is rolling down the runway at an airport in San Antoine where a few POW’s are finally making their way back home. Among them is Major Charles Rane, played by a young unknown at the time named William Devane. He sits through the celebrations and makes a short speech with the hope of getting back to his life. His son was only 18 months old when he left and doesn’t know him. His wife didn’t expect he would ever come home and has fallen in love with another man named Cliff (Driscoll), the cop who gives them their escort home. He attends other ceremonies where he gets a new bright red Cadillac and a box of silver dollars, one for each day of the 7 years he was held captive. They are presented by a local woman, Linda Forchet (Haynes), who faithfully wore his bracelet for the years he was captive and now joins him on stage to return it. For most of this Rane appears a bit numb. He doesn’t get angry at his wife and in one of the film’s iconic scenes invites Cliff to torture him with a rope like the North Vietnamese did. Throughout it all he’s kind of in a daze with flashbacks to his torture. It all finally explodes when a group of men ambush him in his home to steal those silver dollars. He refuses to give them up and in another iconic scene gets his hand ground in the garbage disposal. His son tells them where to find the coins and the gang leave with them, killing his wife and child and leaving him bleeding and likely dying.
We’ve seen that story play out in various ways with actors like Chuck Norris or Charles Bronson, and as in those films Rane decides to go after the gang. He gets a claw for his hand which he sharpens razor-fine and takes Linda along for the ride. She’s kind of his groupie, a term she has to explain to him early in the film. All of this leads to those bloody encounters that scared so many studios, audience members, and psychologists. It’s actually quite a quiet and calm film before the final 10 minutes. Folks get what they have comin’, and you can guess the rest.
Tommy Lee Jones in one of his first film roles plays Johnny, another POW and friend to Rane. Once Rane locates the bad guys, he switches out Linda for Johnny to deliver that final bit of justice. Jones doesn’t have much to really do here, but you start to see the beginnings of what would end up being a pretty fine career.
I think you’ll be surprised how concentrated the violence really is. The film is so quiet that even the score is minimalistic. Rane rarely shows an ounce of actual emotion, which sets this apart from the more deliberately angry characters to follow in the revenge genre.
Video
Rolling Thunder is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The ultra-high-definition image presentation is arrived at with an HEVC codec at an average of 80-85 mbps. The film was shot on 35mm, so is native 4K. The restoration was made from those 35mm negatives, and with the bump in resolution and the HDR/Dolby Vision improvements the film looks about as good as it ever has. I feel like some of the grain might have been washed, but there is still enough there to maintain that organic atmosphere that is so important in how these films were made and originally presented to their audiences. Flynn used a lot of natural and source light, so there are moments where the film feels much darker than it should, but the contrast here bumps those black levels, and it still makes it hard to see some of these scenes with any detail, but there is Flynn’s original intent to keep in mind. When he’s talking to his wife about her falling for another man, it’s night in a room barely lit at all. It provides intimacy over detail, and I think I’m OK with that.
Audio
The DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono track is pretty much just there to serve the dialog and a little of the score. The shooting scenes sound a lot like Sergio Leone with that exaggerated blast sound and echo but little real sub to flesh it all out. It’s simple, and again, I’m OK with that.
Special Features
The extras are found on the Blu-ray copy which leaves all of the UHD bandwidth for the film.
Lean And Mean – The Early Films Of John Flynn: (20:12) This feature is a pretty inclusive look at Flynn’s filmography and gives you a lot of info on his time with Robert Wise and spends a fair enough amount of time on this film.
Coming Home To War – Scoring Rolling Thunder: (16:18) Composer Barry De Vorzon talks about holding back and letting the drama unfold without much intrusion from his score.
The Making Of Rolling Thunder: (21:51) Surviving cast and crew look back on the experience.
Trailers From Hell – Rolling Thunder: (2:21) An episode of Eli Roth’s show where he gives you info on a film as narration during the film’s original trailer.
Final Thoughts:
Rolling Thunder might not be one of the best known films of the era, but it has a strong following and has certainly been influential to what followed. Quentin Tarantino considers it one of his favorite and named his releasing company Rolling Thunder in honor of the film. For me the drama surrounding the film itself gives us quite a snapshot on how much things have changed. The fear is something hard for me to grasp, and the film was certainly a success without any kind of societal breakdown or streaks of violence. Maybe Rane has a point when he says: “You learn to love the rope. That’s how you beat ’em. That’s how you beat people who torture you. You learn to love ’em. Then they don’t know you’re beatin’ ’em.”
