Rolling Thunder

A returning Vietnam POW comes home to indifference and then to violence, loses his family, and sets out for revenge with a hook where his hand used to be. Paul Schrader wrote it, and his fixation on damaged men and redemptive violence runs all through it.

For most of its length it is a study of a hollowed-out man who cannot feel anything, and then the last twenty minutes deliver one of the most cathartic and brutal finales in 70s cinema. William Devane and a young Tommy Lee Jones are excellent.

A genuine sleeper, and one of the sharpest films the vigilante cycle produced.