The premise

Vietnam veteran Charles Rane is having a bad month. He finally gets home from a VC prisoner of war camp only to find that his wife has left him for the local sheriff, his son doesn't recognize him, and nothing remains of the America he remembers. Then, to top everything off, a few gangsters break into his home, kill his family, stick his hand in a trash disposal, and shoot him in the chest for some silver dollars he got from the state of Texas. 

Less one hand and a family, Rane is ready to do the only thing he knows how to do: kill lots of bad guys.

Written by Paul Schrader, the dude who wrote Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder works on two levels: firstly, as an intense character study of a Vietnam vet who is still fighting the war despite being back at home (why avenge a family that doesn't love you?), and secondly, as a balls-out revenge B-movie. It satisfies, it thought-provokes, and it features a main character who uses his prosthetic hook arm as a weapon. It's pretty fucking badass.

The rarity

You won't see any screencaps of Rolling Thunder in this article, and for good reason: it's not out on DVD. In fact, I can't find it anywhere outside of an Amazon VHS tape, and a few non-working torrents. 

This is a good thing.

Not because the film is bad, mind you -- it most certainly is not -- but because it adds to the film's obscure, cult appeal. "You've heard of Rolling Thunder?," you can say. "Oh, that's nice. Have you seen it? No? Oh, that's a shame, because I went through the trouble of tracking down and watching a copy. I guess I just care more about cinema than you do." No film featuring an amputee protagonist could ever not feel like an underground B flick, and Rolling Thunder's rarity makes it all the more enjoyable to watch or own.

I've only got a dinky little VHS copy, but watching it makes me feel like I'm one step closer to recreating how it must have felt to find these little hidden cinematic treasures, unbeknownst to all others before the days of DVD and the Internet.

Tommy Lee Jones

He's in it, he's really young, he's got a unibrow, and he's a total fucking badass. The dude only has two emotions throughout the entire film: sad stoicism, and gleeful rage. He's not even the main character, but I'm tempted to say Tommy Lee's role as Capt. Johnny Vohden is one of the best of his career.

The hand

I've talked a lot about it already, but it's difficult to understate the inherent badassity of mutilation-inspired revenge. The gangsters shove poor Rane's hand into a sink garbage disposal, and a couple of scenes later he's got a metal claw attached to his arm. Throughout the film, he uses it for all manner of wonderful things: he pins a guy's hand to wooden table, loads a revolver, and -- oh yeah -- stabs a guy in the motherfucking ballsack with it. 

It's pretty goddamn hardcore.

"I'm gonna kill a bunch of people"

If you can't be arsed to actually find the damn movie, I can't necessarily blame you -- I wouldn't spend $25 on a VHS tape solely based on my recommendation, either. That in mind, here's the final gunfight, which, apart from including some enjoyable 70's gunfight logic (two guys running down a stairwell being shot at by a half-dozen men downstairs somehow don't get immediately killed), contains one of the single greatest one-liners ever spoken on film.

To set up the scene: Rane and Vohden have found the men who killed Rane's family in a Mexican brothel. Vohden has gone in ahead and shacked up with a whore to await Rane's signal. Rane finds the room with the guy who personally shot him in the chest (oh yeah, I forgot to mention that: they destroy Rane's hand, then shoot his wife and son, then shoot him), yells "Got your time, boy," and the scene begins.

A lot of people really love Rane's emotionless declaration of "Got your time, boy," but I much prefer Vohden's equally emotionless response to the whore's question, "What the fuck are you doing?" As Vohden puts together his pump shotgun, he matter-of-factly promises "I'm gonna kill a bunch of people." 

And boy, do they.

In case you had any doubts as to the manliness of this film, just consider where it ends -- literally seconds after the final bad guy has been killed. The film is about Rane's revenge, and nothing else; once said vengeance is complete, the movie knows it's time to get the hell out of there. That is one mantastic certainty of vision, right there.