[Paul Schrader seems] to have succumbed to a paralysed narcissism. His cinephile enthusiasms, which have run to simply but powerfully motivated blood and thunder plots, graced with metaphysical ironies ranging from Bresson to [Alfred] Hitchcock, have locked in Rolling Thunder on the most primitive, exploitative level. Ex-Vietnam POW Charles Rane … returns home to San Antonio, Texas, and discovers that his wife wants to leave him for his best friend. However, a gang of thugs erupt into his home in search of one of his valuable coming home gifts, beat and torture him (prompting some flashback allusions to how he endured similar treatment in Vietnam) and leave with the loot after shooting his wife and child. Putting himself into training to streamline his newly acquired artificial hand into a lethal weapon, Rane sets off in pursuit with a Vietnam buddy … more obviously traumatised by the war.

The most revealing...