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Who'll Stop the Rain? (1978)

Director: Karel Reisz

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

A traumatised Vietnam war correspondent can draw 'no more cheap morals' from the bloody absurdity around him. 'In a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, everyone's gonna want to get high' he reasons, as he blindly steps into the heroin business and joins the 'Dog Soldiers' of Robert Stone's novel and Reisz's excellent adaptation. Involving old buddy Nolte and his own wife Weld in his doomed dope deal, he precipitates a compelling chase through the corrupt moral wasteland of counter-culture/CIA-culture America. On the way, Washington power-play is mirrored in the casual sadism of the pursuers, and the conventional 'MacGuffin' role of the 2kg bag takes on a metaphorical charge. Reisz nimbly avoids the Big Theme style, finds the pace of his material early, and sustains it brilliantly, emerging with a contemporary classic of hard-edged adventure and three superb character studies.

Author: PT 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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User reviews of this film

  • joe said...
    Posted on Sep 12 2008 22:21 i`ve seen the movie when it came out and i like to see it again every so often. i suppose it might just be something personal, but there is a lot of movies that made the big bucks office which i have no desire to see twice. the picture has this raw objectivity and is very indicative of an era or a milieu within the era and the individual within this milieu. i think it falls into category of works such as 'boxcar bertha', ' mean streets ', 'dogday afternoon' - where individuals are firmly difined and people die not always for billions, king and country or high moral grounds but for seven dollars and some esoteric, elusive moral reasons that amount to spiteness maybe due to the fact that they do not even get the chance to show themselves at any 'higher' ground - yet how much physical and emotinal pain they are capable of enduring.
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Cast & crew

Director: Karel Reisz

Producer: Herb Jaffe, Gabriel Katzka

Cast: Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, Anthony Zerbe, Richard Masur, Ray Sharkey, Gail Strickland, Charles Haid, David Opatoshu full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 126 mins


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