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GUARDIAN Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:05:00 GMT
John Flynn's Rolling Thunder is finally out on DVD. He may not have made enough films, says John Patterson, but when he did, the script came first
John Flynn's Rolling Thunder (1977), available this week for the first time on DVD, takes you back to a time when Hollywood still made grown-up medium-budget thrillers like Charley Varrick, Mr Majestyk or Jackson County Jail. Flynn died in 2007 and never made enough movies; this one reminds us how good he was.
Rolling Thunder was written by Paul Schrader and – like Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza, written by Schrader and his brother Leonard – it signposts themes and imagery that would obsess Schrader in his own movies: Vietnam veterans, samurai ethics, and orgasmic explosions of cathartically violent revenge. Oh, and horribly mutilated hands. POWs Rane (William Devane) and Voden (Tommy Lee Jones) return to Texas after years of torture in a Hanoi prison. Rane's wife leaves him and his young son barely knows him. Rewarded by his hometown.....
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GUARDIAN Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:03:00 GMT
He's been the toast of Sundance three years running, but the charismatic cult leader from Martha Marcy May Marlene says 'one of my strengths is that people don't know who I am'
Actors are supposed to bask in glory when it comes, but right now John Hawkes seems to be grimacing through it. Partly that's because exposure is the last thing the Texan actor was seeking, partly it's because his latest role has also taken its toll on his body. He's just got back from this year's Sundance Film Festival, where his movie, The Surrogate, received awards, standing ovations and the biggest sale ($6m). Playing a polio-stricken poet in search of sexual experience, Hawkes had to spend most of the movie lying in bed. "His spine is horrifically curved and he can only movie his head 90 degrees," he explains. "So it was my idea to make a soccer ball-sized piece of foam so that would lay under my left side to curve my spine. And it was uncomfortable. Health professionals have told me my organs have.....
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