Who'll Stop the Rain?

Hippie ideals die in automatic weapons fire

The shadow of the Vietnam War hung over the seventies throughout the entire decade. I personally experienced the Vietnam Syndrome during my service in the Navy in the late 70s. Friends turned on me when I joined up, calling me a baby killer. The general public was apathetic about your service or hostile to you; there was no "Thank you for your service." I stopped wearing my uniform on liberty to avoid problems.

Maybe that's why Who'll Stop the Rain? is one of my favorite movies. There was a cluster of movies made in the late seventies that tried to wrestle with the experience and meaning of the war: The Deer Hunter, Coming Home, and Apocalypse Now. But as fine as all those movies are, Who'll Stop the Rain? struck home with me immediately when I saw it while serving, when it first came out. It was a rousing, yet deeply cynical chronicle of its times.

The movie opens in Vietnam in 1971; combat reporter John Converse, deeply disillusioned by his experience covering the war convinces his buddy, former Marine Ray Hicks (played by Nick Nolte), to help transport two kilos of heroin back to America. Unknown to him, he is being set up by a shady government agent to rip off the drugs. When Hicks arrives in Berkeley to hand over the drugs to Converse's wife Marge, he has to fight off the agent's goons to escape with her and the drugs. From there, they travel south, trying to get rid of the heroin, while the agent and his henchmen pursue.

The movie concludes with a gun battle at Hicks' Arizona hideaway, a former hippie compound, complete with an outdoor sound system and psychedelic lights. (spoilers) Ray kills the henchmen and gives John and Marge the chance to escape, but is mortally wounded in the fight. Ray, carrying the heroin, marches down railroad tracks for a pickup by the husband and wife but when they find him, he has died. John buries him and dumps the two kilos of smack over the desert ground and drives away as Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Who'll Stop the Rain?" plays.

Superficially, this move has a lot of my favorite elements. You have corrupt cops, evil henchmen (Ray Sharkey and Richard Masur are two of the all time greatest slimy goons ever), hapless civilians caught in a nihilistic trap, and a great soundtrack. You also have Nick Nolte at his peak of manly cool, perfectly embodying the trapped anger and violent cynicism of a classic anti-hero.

Who'll Stop the Rain? isn't just about Vietnam. In fact, I think it just uses the war as a way in to a bigger take on the years that followed the collapse of the days of free love and peace. I came of age in that decade and maybe that's why the movie was such a touchstone from the first time I saw it. The movie is based on the book Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone, who was connected to Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, one of the founding institutions of the hippie movement. Stone had a front seat to the collapse of the ideals of the Love Generation.

Hunter S. Thompson said it best in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, referring to the end of an era. "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Those of us in the Jones Generation, the last half of the Baby Boom, were like people who showed up late to a party that was already winding down. We inherited sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but none of the idealism of our older cousins, brothers, and sisters. They had Woodstock, we had Watergate.

Structurally, the movie is perfectly constructed to get you to root for Nolte's anti-hero. He has an honorable past (Marine combat veteran), is deeply cynical but also embedded with a code of honor. He is surrounded by weak characters (John Converse spends most of the movie getting slapped around; Marge is a junkie) and truly evil villains. In true Noir fashion, Hicks is the only honorable man in a corrupt world.

Interestingly, in the book, Hicks is a very troubled sociopath. Stone puts this dangerous and unbalanced character in the middle of a deeply cynical scenario, rather than a cynical, yet heroic protagonist. The dynamic is just as compelling, with the added suspense of wondering how such a flawed character will react at the end.

Who'll Stop the Rain is a hard-boiled story of an era when idealism faded and nearly died. Whether that resonates with you personally or not, as it does with me, it's a perfectly executed Neo-noir with a great cast and soundtrack.