Mark's Film Classics 1

Who'll Stop the Rain (dir. Karl Reisz) Anytime I get depressed about living during the reign of Bush Jong-Il, I think back and remember we've been here before. Energy prices skyrocketing and pissing everyone off: check. Ass-deep in a war that polarized the country and also pissed everyone off: check. Corrupt would-be dictator/President siccing the Justice Department on thoughtcriminals and political opponents: check. Humongous quantities of drugs coming in from the war zone (what, you think those Afghan warlords aren't selling the processed stuff right back to us?), blowing out the lives of half the people you see, and creating dirty enforcers up and down the supply chain: check. Robert Stone's wonderful novel Dog Soldiers is a perfect memento. The movie adaptation is a great 70s movie, a great noir, a great heroin movie, a great Vietnam movie, and a great paranoia movie all at once. The whole cast is amazing, starting with Nick Nolte, who's just a baby in this movie and who looks just as dangerously crazy as he is today. Ditto the editing (another cinematic art that reached a kind of perfection in the 70s--cf. Taxi Driver, The French Connection) and the direction, which makes the Arizona desert as claustrophobic as a San Francisco apartment. Mark's review: ****