Who'll Stop The Rain

Rating:
Summary: Mobsters, drugs, automatic weapons, and Tuesday Weld.
Review: This is a visual and audio experience for lovers of action and anti-hereos. Lot's of known faces in this one.

Rating:
Summary: Tough Vietnam Era Flick
Review: To the credit of director Karel Reisz, "Who'll Stop The Rain" is a tough uncompromising film that takes an honest look at it's subject matter and doesn't back off. The story concerns a journalist in Vietnam, John Coverse,(Michael Moriarty) who asks his merchant marine buddy, Ray Hicks,(Nick Nolte) to smuggle some heroin back to the States. Hicks does so reluctantly only because Converse is his friend. Once back in the States, Hicks is confronted with a narcotics agent(Anthony Zerbe) and his hired thugs(Ray Sharkey and Richard Masur) trying to hijack the drugs by terrorizing Coverse's wife, Marge(Tuesday Weld). It is now Hicks' sworn duty to protect Marge and unload the stash. The performances in this film by all the principals are uniformly excellent. Though the film is tough going at times it only underlines a strong anti-drug message. A previous reviewer took issue with the film's ending. Not to give anything away, I disagree with that assessment though I've never read the film's source material, Robert Stone's "Dog Soldiers". "Who'll Stop The Rain" is another example of the adventurous filmmaking that was a product of the seventies.