Rolling Thunder

Charles Rane, a major in the United States Air Force, comes home to Texas after years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam and is greeted as a hero by his town. The welcome includes a car, a cash gift and a reunion with a wife and son who have grown distant during his long absence. When thieves break into his house to take the reward money, the family is attacked: his wife and son are killed and Rane is left with a disabling injury to his hand. After recovering in hospital, he sets out with his fellow former prisoner Johnny Vohden and an old girlfriend, Linda Forchet, to track down those responsible.

John Flynn directed the film, which sits between The Outfit and Defiance in a directing career that began with The Sergeant in 1968. Paul Schrader and Heywood Gould wrote the screenplay, Norman T. Herman produced, and the cast of forty is led by William Devane as Rane, Tommy Lee Jones as Vohden, Linda Haynes as Linda Forchet and Dabney Coleman as Maxwell. Made for about two million dollars by Lawrence Gordon Productions with American International Pictures, it was released in November 1977.

On IMDb it holds a critics' rating of 6.9 from fourteen reviews, alongside a TMDB audience rating of 6.8 from 271 votes, a narrow gap between professional and viewer response. The film belongs to the cycle of revenge thrillers that followed the Vietnam War.