{"id":35045,"date":"2024-01-21T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-21T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=35045"},"modified":"2024-01-20T09:52:12","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T14:52:12","slug":"35045","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=35045","title":{"rendered":"“Rolling Thunder” (1977) starring William Devane & Tommy Lee Jones \/ Z-View"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rolling Thunder <\/strong><\/em>(1977)<\/p>\n

Director:\u00a0 John Flynn<\/strong><\/p>\n

Screenplay: Paul Schrader, Heywood Gould<\/strong>; story by Paul Schrader<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stars: William Devane, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Haynes, James Best, Lisa Blake Richards, Luke Askew, James Victor, Cassie Yates <\/strong>and Dabney Coleman.<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tagline: CHARLES RANE: EXECUTIONER! The war had turned him into a machine for murder. He had nothing to live for…except revenge<\/em><\/p>\n

The Plot\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

After seven years in a prisoner of war camp, Major Charles Rane (Devane) returns home.\u00a0 The years a prisoner were brutal.\u00a0 Rane was repeatedly tortured.\u00a0 Adjustment to his new freedom will be difficult.\u00a0 Making it worse, his son, who was a baby when Rane was captured, doesn’t remember him.\u00a0 His wife now loves another man,<\/p>\n

Although his hometown considers him a hero, Rane doesn’t feel like one.\u00a0 At a ceremony honoring his return, Rane is presented with a new Cadillac and\u00a02,555 silver dollars \u2013 one for every day he was captive, plus one for luck.\u00a0 Later three lowlifes break into Rane’s house to steal the money.\u00a0 They torture Rane but he refuses to tell them where he hid the cash.\u00a0 Even when they force Rane’s hand into a garbage disposal, he won’t talk.<\/p>\n

When Rane’s wife and son enter the house, the thugs threaten them.\u00a0 Rane’s son tells where the silver dollars are hidden.\u00a0 The thieves then shoot Rane, his wife and son.<\/p>\n

Only Rane survives.\u00a0 He awakens in a hospital,\u00a0 His mangled hand had to be removed, replaced by a hook.\u00a0 Rane reaches out to\u00a0 Johnny Vohden (Jones), another soldier from his unit that also was a POW with him.\u00a0 Rane plans to get revenge on three murderers who killed his son, wife and left him for dead.\u00a0 Johnny doesn’t hesitate to join him.<\/p>\n

Major Charles Rane has come home to war.<\/p>\n

Thoughts (beware of spoilers)\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m not a fan of the movie’s poster shown above.\u00a0 It makes Rolling Thunder look like a cheap horror film.<\/p>\n

Paul Schrader who co-wrote the film originally had Rane written as a “white-trash racist”.\u00a0 He wanted Rane’s killing spree to be metaphor for Vietnam.\u00a0 The rewritten screenplay takes out that aspect and makes Rane a hero.<\/p>\n

James Best known as the bumbling Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane on The Dukes of Hazzard<\/em> plays one of the three murderers.\u00a0 If you only know him from The Dukes<\/em>, it’s odd seeing him play a tough guy thug.\u00a0 In Rolling Thunder, Best’s character always seems to be sweating.\u00a0 He achieved his effect by placing ice cubes under his hat.<\/p>\n

Rolling Thunder <\/strong><\/em>(1977) earns 3 of 5 stars.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolling Thunder (1977) Director:\u00a0 John Flynn Screenplay: Paul Schrader, Heywood Gould; story by Paul Schrader Stars: William Devane, Tommy Lee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,51,54,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-crime","category-movies","category-z-view"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35045"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35048,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35045\/revisions\/35048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}