Synopsis
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.
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Cast
- William DevaneMajor Charles Rane
- Tommy Lee JonesJohnny Vohden
- Linda HaynesLinda Forchet
- James BestTexan
- Dabney ColemanMaxwell
- Lisa Blake RichardsJanet
- Luke AskewAutomatic Slim
- Lawrason DriscollCliff
- James VictorLopez
- Cassie YatesCandy
Recommendations
- 80
The Guardian
Devane gives a performance of anguished depth, the final carnage is spectacular and it's a time capsule of a movie. - 80
The Telegraph
William Devane's performance – as Major Charles Rane, a former POW who sees his family get killed by hoodlums – remains magnetic: stoic and unhinged. - 80
Time Out
At times deeply insightful, at others wholly crass, Rolling Thunder is a fascinating curio, the meeting point between realism and exploitation. - 75
TV Guide Magazine
While Rolling Thunder suffers from Schrader's predictable obsessions with masculine ritual and gunplay, Devane and Jones enhance the material with their nuanced, sensitive portrayals of men who have lost their souls in another land. - 75
Slant Magazine
Essentially a liberal vigilante film that’s rife with all the contradictions that description implies, Rolling Thunder has a pared, weirdly principled grace that still packs a punch. - 70
Village Voice
Performances are made crystalline through a sixth sense for camera placement and curt cutting from director John Flynn, whose 2007 passing was little noted, though his no-BS way of laying down a story is a rare commodity in any era. - 67
The A.V. Club
Rolling Thunder is a bloody, nasty, complicated action movie for a bloody, nasty, complicated moment in American history. - 60
CineVue
If you can forgive the cardboard villains and suspicious editing, there is plenty here to hold your interest.
