User Reviews

Based on Robert Stone's National Book Award-winning novel 'Dog Soldiers,' "Who'll Stop the Rain" is both a suspenseful thriller and an affecting meditation on the chaos and disillusionment of the Vietnam era.

Converse (Michael Moriarty) is a journalist who went to Vietnam looking for the big story but finds only madness and abject fear. He also discovers that, in a world where nothing makes sense, people are just naturally going to want to get high.

In Saigon, Converse falls in with Charmian (Gail Strickland), a wealthy French expatriate holdout from the Colonial days who maintains a life of relative luxury through narco-trafficking. Weary of the constant despair and terror, Converse agrees to participate in a scheme to smuggle heroin back from Vietnam to Los Angeles. However, Converse can't smuggle the dope himself--the Army is on to the fact that correspondents and GI's have been smuggling kilos of ultra-pure, ultra-cheap heroin back from Southeast Asia and turning large profits selling the dope in the US--so he persuades his old friend, Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte), a Merchant Marine sailor whose vessel is about to set sail from Vietnam for the Pacific Coast, to hide the dope on his ship and then deliver it to Converse's wife Marge (Tuesday Weld), who Converse assures Ray will pay him several thousand dollars for the favor once he makes the delivery.

Ray reluctantly agrees--he's not sure he trusts Converse, but he needs the money. All goes well until Ray arrives in LA and realizes he's being tailed by two thugs (Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey) who may or may not be working for Converse. To make things worse, he arrives at the Converse home and meets Marge, who is beautiful but obviously strung out--not on junk, it turns out, but, rather, on prescription painkillers.

The thugs follow Ray to Converse's, and Ray and Marge narrowly manage to escape. Not sure whether he's being double-crossed by Converse or if Converse is being double-crossed by his supplier, Ray decides to go on the run, dragging along the drugged-out Marge. Ray turns out to be a bit of a paranoid survivalist with ties to the now-dwindling hippie counterculture, and takes Marge first to his house, where he keeps a dune buggy and a stash of weapons, and then to hide out in an old, all but deserted commune high in the California Sierra. Ray and Marge go on the road, with the additional complication of Marge's painful withdrawal symptoms, having run out of dilaudid. Ray quickly realizes that the only way to help Marge get off the painkillers while on the run is to start weaning her off--with the heroin.

Meanwhile, Converse has returned to the US to find the plan has gone wrong. Abducted by the thugs (who, it turns out, are working for Charmian and Antheil, a corrupt government agent played by Anthony Zerbe), Converse is forced to help track down Ray and Marge and, more importantly, the sack full of very valuable dope.

Though, like most films, "Who'll Stop the Rain" lacks the subtlety and depth of its literary precursor, the movie quite skillfully employs the novel's biting, cynical perspective on the despair and chaos surrounding both the war in Vietnam and the end of the counter-cultural revolution after Manson and Altamont. While in graduate school at Stanford, novelist Stone was a fringe member of fellow novelist Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters--whose 'Acid Test' parties were the main artery by which LSD was introduced to California youth culture. Among the Pranksters was Neal Cassady, who first found fame as the basis for hipster prototype Dean Moriarty in Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' and later fell in with the Grateful Dead before finding his end by a railroad track in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1966. Cassady is the primary model for Ray Hicks, and then-unknown Nick Nolte is perfectly cast in the role, capturing the rough blend of charming rake and pyschopath that made Cassady a counterculture icon. Indeed, the film is rife with references to the Prankster and Beat glory days, easily recognizable to those familiar with the history of those cultural/literary movements.

The film's soundtrack (as the title suggests) consists mostly of songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and though Stone always hated that the producers changed the title from 'Dog Soldiers' to 'Who'll Stop the Rain,' Creedence's catchy country rock is an appropriate background.

Tuesday Weld, the once-popular Hollywood ingenue whose career was derailed by addiction and mental illness, portrays Marge's state of delusional intoxication and emotional distress like one who has actually been there. Michael Moriarty (of 'Law and Order' fame) gives a well-controlled performance as the somewhat cowardly, morally confused Converse. But the show is really Nick Nolte's. Though this film has been largely forgotten, it was a starmaking turn for Nolte, his first shot to carry a movie and the first film in which he begins to establish the rough-edged, sensitive bad-ass persona that has become his stock and trade.

"Who'll Stop the Rain" is a fine piece of vintage seventies memorabilia, a nail-biting thriller, and a useful lens into the confusion of American life during the last years of our military presence in Vietnam.

At the beginning of the film Michael Moriarty, a correspondent in Vietnam, is writing a letter to his wife (Tuesday Weld), describing how the elephants are thought to be used as pack animals for the VC, so US choppers have been ordered to chase them and destroy them. "You see," he writes, "in a word where flying men pursue elephants, people just naturally have to get high." That's a pretty good line, and it's not the only one in this fairly literate dialog.

Moriarty obliges Nick Nolte, a friend from their Marine Corps days, to smuggle five pounds of heroin back into the states for him. Everything is all set up. Well, it's not. A crooked narcotics agent (Zerbe) and a couple of his goons barge in and try to rip off the smack. Nolte escapes with Weld. The heavies capture Moriarty and demand to know where Nolte and Weld have taken this fortune's worth of heroin, but he has no idea. They beat hell out of him, shoot him full of drugs, force him back on a red hot stove burner, and dunk him in a bathtub, but it's no use. (Man, does Moriarty do a great job of registering horror and pain.) There follows a cross-country pursuit, from Oakland to Los Angeles to a barren mountain in New Mexico, site of a long-deserted hippie commune and fair grounds. That's where the final shootout takes place, with Nolte and Weld on the mountain and Zerbe, his goons, and the captive Moriarty down below.

If this sounds a little confusing it's because I found the story itself a little confusing. At critical points in the story, cause and effect seem to evaporate. I'll just give one example. Nolte and Weld in their Land Rover or whatever it is race across the Southwest with their stash and an M16. Weld asks where they are going. Nolte tells her that they're headed for this isolated hideaway in the great beyond of the New Mexico hills, El Ojo Grande. For all purposes, he seems to have improvised their destination on the spot. And yet, after leaving the highway and crawling up a dirt road and driving through dry washes, they finally pull up at their destination, one of Zerbe's spies is watching them through binoculars and through his radio tells Zerbe, "They're here." I don't know, either.

Throughout, the film follows the general idea layed out by Moriarty in his letter. Culture ("flying men") destroy Nature ("elephants"). And narcotics are the by-product of this conflict. The cities we see are smoggy industrial Oakland and a Los Angeles in which rich people are ridiculed as stupid before being victimized for no reason. Zerbe, the government man representing civilization, is corrupt and treacherous. There are one or two references to Nietzsche, the relevance of which eluded me, but I guess philosophy is culture too, even if its boiled down to a crib sheet. "When he encounters danger the man of courage goes forward." You don't have to read Nietzsche to get the idea. You don't have to get past Hemingway in high school. Nolte, basically a natural man, could easily hand over the dope but he won't do it -- out of pride. "I swore I was never again going to let myself be ordered around by morons." That's his justification for endangering everyone's lives. Culture is despicable.

Nolte is only really happy after he reaches the faded hippy hideout, an unspoiled paradise now, full of joyous memories for him. He plays Hank Snow's "Golden Rocket" and does an impromptu square dance with Weld on the delapidated bandstand. His friend, a kind of caretaker of the place who lives in a tiny abandoned mission, is a Mexican and a gardener and a caring avuncular figure. How natural can you get? Can you beat a Mexican gardener? Well, I guess you could, but at least we are spared the stereotypical Indian communing with the spirits and exercising second sight.

Villains aside, the characters are pretty complex, not to say unformed. Nolte's role is the easiest -- the he-man who knows his business and is hard. Weld is required to change from a blithering housewife who works in a Berkeley bookstore to a drugged-out frightened escapee from the bourgeois life who falls for Nolte and begins to share his dreams of owning a boat in Mexico. ("But who will be on the boat?", she asks him dreamily. "Where will the boat go? It must be some boat.") The most complex character -- and the best performance -- is Moriarty's. He's a genuine philosopher. He commits an existential act at the beginning and follows its consequences through all the way. Whenever he's asked a question of any intricacy, his answer is, "I don't know," said simply, the way a child might say it in a second-grade class. He's bony and balding, his face innocent and a bit bewildered, and he feels real pain -- but he faces threats with a gangling carelessness. A gun is put to his head and he's ordered to get down on his knees and pray. Instead he walks away and sits down carelessly. The performance is just short of marvelous.

I'm not sure I've got a grasp around the whole movie. I'm not sure anyone does. It's vague enough to be interpreted a dozen different ways and sometimes seems meandering. But what's on screen is directed well by Karel Reisz, my director in "Weeds," and if we can ignore the holes in the script it's an enjoyable and tense story. But do not look for a standard-typical action flick, with people's heads getting regularly wrenched off by some Lyngbakr with an attitude. It's more than that.

Great performances by Nolte, Weld, Mazur and Sharkey should have earned this suspenseful film a higher viewer rating, but the plot is weak. Warning: Spoilers! Vietnam is the starting point, but the theme of this film is the drug trade's cruelty and damage: Marge loses her child, father, and home; Antheil shows us the corruption of law enforcement; Converse goes against all he believes. Unlike the big-scale "Scarface", which associated drugs with glamor, fancy homes, big money (and violence), "Rain" focuses on a few days of brutal competition for just 2 kilos of heroin.

But I kept stumbling over holes in the plot. Even at 126 minutes (and maybe because of that length), the film didn't tell us: why Hicks smuggled the heroin against his better judgment; how Hicks (the marijuana smuggler) knew so much about the thugs who followed him to Marge's house for the heroin; why Hicks sacrificed himself for the Converses at the end; why the thug in the powder blue suit was about to kill Antheil at the end. This is one time I would like to see the director's cut, to view what was left on the editing room floor.

The end of the Vietnam War brought with it the baggage that those involved brought home with them to the shores of the US. Soldiers who had gone off as innocent young men returned hardened by their experiences having seen and gone through more than one should expect of a person. Those experiences were rife with stories that could be used in novels and films and both became a staple at the time. A book called DOG SOLDIERS by Robert Stone found its way to the screen in 1978 as WHO'LL STOP THE RAIN.

John Converse (Michael Moriarty) is a war correspondent in Vietnam battle shocked and scarred inside by his experiences. His moral compass tilted from his time there he talks old friend Ray Hicks (Nick Nolte) into smuggling a brick of heroin back home. When he gets there Converse' wife Marge (Tuesday Weld) will pay him and the deal will be completed.

But as with most stories things don't always go as planned. To begin with both Converse and Hicks had no idea that Marge has become addicted to Dilaudid making her judgements not the best. She also has no idea that Hicks is bringing this package and thus no money to give him in return. In addition to that the men Converse set the deal up with are not nearly as reputable as he would have thought.

His nave decision to band with these men results in their attempt to take the drugs from Marge and leave her dead in their wake. They had never counted on Hicks being there and he stops them, leaving them tied up in her house as he and Marge hit the road, drugs in hand. The thugs eventually get free and contact the man behind it all, a corrupt DEA agents named Antheil (Anthony Zerbe). The trio set out to recover the drugs and kill both Hicks and Marge.

The pursued couple hole up in a location Hicks has to decide what to do when Marge begins to go through withdrawal. Hicks uses a portion of the heroin to wean her off her dependence and as the days pass the couple get to know one another and the potential for romance blossoms.

With few options and knowing the men will stop at nothing to get the drugs, Hicks forms a plan. It's risky and there's no clue who will come out of this alive. It is the last hope for both him and Marge and he's willing to take it.

The movie could play out as a simple melodrama but instead with the background of the war combined with the drug smuggling we end up with a movie all on its own, not quite easily pegged as one genre or another. More than anything it's a story about people, who they are, how they act, how they change and where they can go if given the option.

So many movies based on Vietnam vets revolved around their return to home and various forms of PTSD. Some had them broken physically and mentally (COMING HOME) while others showed them as too violent to contain (RAMBO). This movie opts for a more realistic approach and in so doing forms the story into both an anti-war film and a human drama. The war may have destroyed the moral compass of some such as Converse who is willing to sell drugs but it also shows an anti-hero in Hicks who may be complicit in the transaction but still retains enough morality to try and save an innocent woman.

The two main actors in the film, Nolte and Weld, do an amazing job here. Nolte had already proven himself dynamic actor in his earlier films but here shows a mixture of a tough guy who knows how to handle a situation he is thrown in and at the same time sensitive enough to handle the needs of someone in pain. Weld, who had started her career as a girl next door type, shows here that she has more acting chops than many would have thought she possessed. When the two are onscreen together they bring the story to life and that's a satisfying accomplishment making this a movie worth seeking out.

Twilight Time has done their usual job of releasing the film with the best picture quality possible. Extras are limited as with most of their titles and include an isolated music track, a short with supervising editor John Bloom talking about the film and the original theatrical trailer. As with all of their titles this is limited to just 3,000 copies so if interested you'll want to pick one up right away.

I like this movie better than Coming Home and equal to The Deer Hunter. The director really got the confusion of these vets and the times right. Nolte starts to build a fantasy life around Weld and Weld starts demanding no more guns in the middle of a gunfight to the death. I think she kind of represented the peace movement. Nolte was able to project tragic force and Richard Mazur showed what a truly under rated actor he was. Moriarity and Weld were good playing their kooky parts. Haid was excellent as the L. A. Hustler. Nolte's character was just plain tired of games. I love the quote about not ever being ordered around by morons again. Sounded just like every Vietnam vet I knew.

Granted, I found it difficult to watch this movie, much more dark and disturbing than other films on drug use, showing that a lot had changed in cinema since 1955's overpowering "The Man With the Golden Arm". This combines the Vietnam War with the issue of heroin smuggling so there's a lot of violence between the brief war sequences at the beginning and what happens when Nick Nolte is convinced by Michael Moriarty to smuggle a stash into the states. When it comes to drug cartels being deceived, there's going to be some ruthless repercussions which affects many people including Moriarty's wife (Tuesday Weld) whom Nolte takes up with.

One of the best performances of the 1970's not to get an Oscar nomination, Nolte's acting was praised as award worthy and outside of the National Critics, wasn't honored with even a mention of praise. Weld, too, just coming off the equally controversial "Looking For Mr. Goodbar", deserves high acclaim. This film manages to be a good one thanks to an above average script, and never emerges as exploitation which it would have been had the script ended up on a desk at American International rather than the more choosy United Artists. Yet it's a very dark subject, not exactly the type of film that would be for all tastes or watched more than once unless as part of research.

Disaffected journalist John Converse (superbly played by Michael Moriarty) enlists the aid of his gruff, weary and unsociable ex-Marine friend Ray Hicks (a fine and commanding performance by Nick Nolte) to smuggle a stash of heroin from Vietnam into the United States. When the drug drop goes sour, Hicks and John's sad, neurotic pillhead wife Marge (an excellent Tuesday Weld) go on the lam. Director Karel Reisz, working from a gritty and incisive script by Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone, astutely nails the pervasive cynicism, bitterness, moral erosion, paranoia, and disillusionment of the Vietnam-era early 70's while maintaining a steady pace throughout and expertly building a considerable amount of gut-wrenching tension. This film further benefits from the uniformly exceptional acting from a top-drawer cast: Nolte, Weld and Moriarty are all outstanding in the leads; they receive sterling support from Anthony Zerbe as ruthless corrupt federal narcotics agent Antheil, Richard Masur as ferocious psycho thug Danskin, Ray Sharkey as Danskin's jittery, sniveling partner Smitty, Gail Strickland as smooth connection Charmain, Charles Haid as slimy Hollywood dope dealer Eddie Peace, and David Opatoshu as helpful farmer Bender. Robert H. Kline's grainy, yet still polished cinematography, the bleak, harsh, depressing and unflinchingly nihilistic tone, Laurence Rosenthal's rousing score, a wickedly sardonic sense of pitch-black humor, the first-rate soundtrack, the profane, but poetic dialogue, an exciting and well-staged climactic shoot-out, and the devastating downbeat ending are all spot-on as well. An absolute powerhouse.