Film Review: Who'll Stop the Rain (Dog Soldiers, 1978)

Long protracted wars, like the one currently having the shameful finale in Afghanistan, create a lot of misery but also a lot of opportunities to get rich for certain kinds of people. One such opportunity serves as the basis of the plot for Who’ll Stop the Rain , a 1978 thriller drama directed by Karel Reisz.

The film is based on Dog Soldiers , the best-selling and award-winning novel by Robert Stone, partially inspired by his experiences as a news correspondent in the Vietnam War. The plot begins in 1971 when John Converse played by Michael Moriarty , a journalist following US troops, barely survives a friendly fire incident. Converse used to be an idealist, but the endless and pointless slaughter led him to become a nihilistic cynic who ultimately decides to make sense of it all by buying two kilograms of heroin in order to sell it in the USA for profit. US Merchant Marine seaman Ray Hicks played by Nick Nolte , his friend and former Marine, reluctantly agrees to smuggle the shipment to California on a supply ship. He is supposed to go to Berkeley and deliver the heroin to John’s wife Marge played by Tuesday Weld , who should pay him for his service and contact potential buyers. The plan,…

Who’ll Stop the Rain on a superficial level looks like a typical action thriller about a drug deal going bad. The film is, at the same time, a rather serious drama that tries to explore the devastating consequences of the Vietnam War on American society, especially the generation that embraced the optimism and idealism of the 1960s, only to confront the devastating reality shock of the 1970s. This generation is represented by three characters who deal with those changes in different ways, but ultimately experience failure. John used to seek a new and better world, but in the end he embraces the ugliness of the old world, while seeming unaware that his drug-dealing adventure would put him at odds with players with much more experience and power in that sort of game. Marge is desperately trying to maintain some sort of “normalcy” as a regular wife and mother, but this is only a facade tha…

British filmmaker Karel Reisz was best known for dramas, and action wasn’t his forte. He nevertheless did a fine job in the film, which seamlessly wanders into different genres, ranging from war film, crime thriller and road film, until the action-packed finale in the abandoned mountain hippie commune that is clearly inspired by westerns and adventure classics like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre . Reisz, however, shows some problems with pacing and the film is somewhat overlong; the scene featuring decadent Hollywood wannabe “players” to whom Ray tries to sell the heroin is funny, but it could have been left on the cutting room floor. Another, more important problem is in the music, with Reisz apparently not knowing whether to use a conventional “noirish” soundtrack by Laurence Rosenthal or songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival. Yet, despite those flaws, Who’ll Stop the Rain is an eff…

RATING: 7/10 ++

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