Subtitles:

English (SDH), none

Extras:

• The Making of Rolling Thunder (21:49)

• TV Spot (:32)

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.

After spending eight years in a Vietcong prison camp, Maj. Charles Rane (William Devane) returns home to a small town in Texas to be greeted as a hero with a Cadillac convertible and couple thousand dollars in silver dollars (donated by a supermarket), one for each day of his imprisonment, plus one for luck. He accepts the car and the money in much the same manner as he accepts his wife's news that she's fallen in love with another man—impassively.

Nothing seems to move Charlie, though he cares for his young son and he is something of a physical fitness nut. He tells himself that it's as if he'd died when he was captured. One survives years of torture, he says, if "you learn to love the rope—that's how you beat them."

Charlie, as written in the screenplay by Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould, and as acted by Mr. Devane, is such a tough, complicated, explosive character that one keeps wishing that "Rolling Thunder," the film that contains him, were a match for him. It isn't. The movie, which opened yesterday at the Cincerama I and other theaters, has some good things, but in the way it has been directed by John Flynn it moves so easily and sort of foolishly toward its violent climax that all the tension within Charlie has long since escaped the film.

There are some supplements - a 20-minute The Making of Rolling Thunder. We get short snippets from Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, writer Paul Schrader and others. There is also a theatrical trailer, TV and Radio Spots and a Photo Gallery.

BOTTOM LINE:
Rolling Thunder is a shade heavy-handed and one-dimensional for my personal liking but I can see where the appeal comes - as it flows very well with a firm expectation of revenge. This Blu-ray is infinitely superior to the latest DVD and fans who look at this one nostalgically will certainly see the benefit. It's nice to have both the subtitles and the extras as well. 

 

Coming to 4K UHD in April 2024 by Shout! Factory: