Admiring Rolling Thunder does not amount to attributing every aspect of the film to its first screenwriter. That distinction structures the discussion of Schrader.
The screenplay and the film are not the same thing
Quentin Tarantino’s critical relationship with Paul Schrader runs through films directed by other people and through differences between versions of a story. Taxi Driver, from 1976, was written by Schrader and directed by Martin Scorsese. Rolling Thunder, from 1977, was directed by John Flynn and credits the screenplay to Schrader and Heywood Gould. Starting from those credits avoids turning admiration for a cinematic result into an exclusive attribution to one of its collaborators.
In Cinema Speculation, published in 2022, Tarantino examines both films and discusses narrative and moral choices. The Momentary Cinema review from October 22, 2023, captures his interest in the differences between the protagonist in the screenplay for Rolling Thunder and the character played by William Devane. It also summarizes his reading of Taxi Driver as a film about a racist man, a distinction that does not amount to calling the work racist simply because it is identified with its protagonist.
It is a problem of authorship and reception. A screenplay proposes actions, dialogue, and an organization of the story; the film adds bodies, voices, duration, and images. Those choices can intensify one aspect, shift another, or produce a sympathy that the writing did not resolve in the same way. Judging the result requires observing that transformation, not imagining that the text was transferred intact to the screen.
Taxi Driver: intimacy without absolution
Travis Bickle maintains a hostile relationship with the city and organizes his experience through a voice that aims to explain it. The viewer is given access to his thoughts, but that access does not guarantee that he is a reliable observer. The film allows us to perceive contradictions between what he says, what he understands, and what he does. Being close to a consciousness does not force us to accept its diagnosis of the world.
The character’s loneliness also does not automatically justify his actions. It may arouse compassion and, at the same time, become a way of locking himself into increasingly rigid interpretations. The dramatic interest lies in how that isolation relates to the desire to act. Travis seeks a role for himself and may confuse the intensity of his need with the legitimacy of a mission.
Robert De Niro’s performance complicates that relationship. There is awkwardness, fragility, uncomfortable humor, and menace. None of those registers cancels out the others. One scene may draw us close to the character and the next force us to reconsider that closeness. That movement prevents us from reducing the experience to a simple choice between admiring him or rejecting him from the outset.
Violence then raises a question about how we look. A sequence can produce excitement through its editing and shifts in intensity while showing a terrifying act. Discussing that mixture does not require pretending that the audience’s response will be uniform. The film organizes possibilities for reaction, but each viewer may experience the relationship between tension, relief, and revulsion differently.
Rolling Thunder and the difficulty of return
In Rolling Thunder, the return of a prisoner of war to his home does not restore a previous life. Public ceremony and private experience do not align. The character may be received as a hero and still find himself unable to inhabit the ties he left behind again. That distance between recognition and belonging gives depth to a story that later takes the form of revenge.
William Devane brings a restraint that forces us to read the smallest details. The absence of an open display of feeling does not mean the absence of suffering. It may suggest an experience the character does not know how, or cannot, communicate in the terms expected by those around him. The film makes domestic normality feel strange and makes certain relationships more understandable to him in a context of violence than in everyday life.
The presence of the companion played by Tommy Lee Jones introduces another form of recognition. Among people who share an experience, there can be an understanding that does not need to be explained at length. That economy is dramatically powerful, but also unsettling: the ease of acting together again does not mean that action leads to recovery. A decision can seem clear precisely because it avoids emotional problems that are much harder to solve.
A confession and a violent act can offer contradictory versions of the same man. The screenplay gains complexity when it allows that contradiction to remain, rather than resolving it through a definitive psychological explanation.
The discussion of Schrader has to preserve that complexity. It is not enough to celebrate a brutal screenplay or to use the word revenge to consider its meaning explained. What matters are the differences between versions, the spectator’s position, and the way a film transforms violence into an emotional experience. The reading of Cinema Speculation makes it possible to place Tarantino’s judgments within a broader conversation, in which admiring a work can also mean debating central decisions in its writing.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.