Article by: Emanuel Trotto

Translation by: Paola Pupella

A Vietnam veteran, unsuited, insomniac, unable to integrate in society, finally arms himself and carries out a massacre. We are not talking about Taxi Driver, but a just subsequent film to Scorsese’s masterpiece (showing only one year later, in 1977): Rolling Thunder.

Both films arise from the anguished pen of Paul Schrader, who, after a noteworthy activity as a scriptwriter (The Yakuza for Sidney Pollack, Obsession for Brian De Palma), firmly intended to become a director. However, because of production problems, his project was rather handed to John Flynn as director and Heywood Gould as re-scriptwriter. Schrader’s debut will happen later, in 1978, with a working class drama entitled Blue Collar.

The story of alienation and revenge of Major Rane is perfect. When the protagonist comes back to his hometown in Texas, after 7 years of imprisonment in Vietnam (that scarred him deeply), his fellow citizens reward “his heroism” with a box of silver dollars. Some bandits proceed to steal his money and kill cruelly his wife and his child. Major Rane then decides to take the law into his own hands.

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