Major Charles Rane (William Devane) returns home from a Hanoi prisoner of war camp after seven years, a local hero. He was tortured relentlessly and is now having difficult acclimatising to the town he left, a wife who thought him dead and a son who can't remember him. When a group of thugs breaks into his home and tortures him and then kills his wife and son, he is not best pleased and goes in search of them.
Writer Paul Schrader has done many films in the man standing alone / a man's gotta do etc mould and this is one of those. Devane, who sadly, too briefly tinkered with A list stardom is excellent as the cool, reserved, but is he crazy, guy out for revenge. There is good support from Linda Haynes as the tart with a heart who clings to Devane and Tommy Lee Jones is solid as his army pal, long before the actor started chewing the scenery. It's a sometimes strange mixture of trying to unscramble what's going on in Devane's bitter and closed to the world mind and shades of the crassest Death Wish films. A typical revenge film then with something of a touch of class - apparently a Tarantino favourite.
Writer Paul Schrader has done many films in the man standing alone / a man's gotta do etc mould and this is one of those. Devane, who sadly, too briefly tinkered with A list stardom is excellent as the cool, reserved, but is he crazy, guy out for revenge. There is good support from Linda Haynes as the tart with a heart who clings to Devane and Tommy Lee Jones is solid as his army pal, long before the actor started chewing the scenery. It's a sometimes strange mixture of trying to unscramble what's going on in Devane's bitter and closed to the world mind and shades of the crassest Death Wish films. A typical revenge film then with something of a touch of class - apparently a Tarantino favourite.