“Let me tell you the latest. Military Command has decided that elephants are among enemy agents because they carry supplies to the Viet Cong. So now they are stampeding elephants and gunning them down from the air. Of course, I filed a suitably outraged story about it. And that was my last one. I have no more cheap morals to draw from all this death. So I've taken action...I've started something here that I can't stop, and it's the right thing, I know. You see, in a world where elephants are pursued by flying men, people are just naturally going to want to get high.”
Those words are written by John Converse (Michael Moriarty), a writer for a tabloid rag who has been in Vietnam in an attempt at being meaningful for once in his life. Demoralized by his experiences, burnt out, and alienated he has just made a deal to smuggle heroin into the states. He doesn't really know why he's doing it or what it's supposed to mean, it's just a gut reaction – his idea of protest. Little does his wife Marge, to whom the above missive is dispatched, know what's coming. The heroin may be the least of her problems once John's new associates come looking for the skag. For that matter, she's going to have her hands full with Ray Hicks, John's true friend who does the carrying.
Not that Hicks (Nick Nolte) wants to or thinks it's a good idea. Ray Hicks, a Merchant Marine and close to being temperamentally fried by the war himself, is a self-educated man whose two major influences have been Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and Friederich Nietzsche. Learning that Hicks still reads Nietzsche, Converse declares it “piquant”: a typical comment from Converse, it's impossible to tell if he's being condescending. “'Piquant', I don't know the hell that means. You turned me on to that book.” Hicks doesn't like this scheme one bit, not the drugs or the risk. He'll do it, though, because Hicks has cultivated a strong sense of honor and John is his friend...besides which, his good friend John has backed him into it by telling his new associates all about Ray Hicks.
All of which leads to Marge's doorstep in liberal Berkeley California. Marge (Tuesday Weld)...well, she's a busy woman, alright? She's raising her young daughter, her father is John's publisher, she's got a modern, active life trying not to let the war touch her, and truth be told she's developing a mean little drug habit with Dilaudid, not that it's anyone's business, and now she's got this letter from her husband saying he owes one Ray Hicks some money and can you please pay him, so you'll just have to be understanding if she didn't take the time to get to the bank.. Nobody said anything about heroin or guns or about her and John being marks!
Yeah, and nobody told her that her evening would go bad as fast as it does, with Hicks not so much paying her a visit as exploding into her life. Ray: “You can't treat people in this outrageous fucking manner!” Ray and Marge do not “meet cute”. Cue a couple of thugs who work for a crooked Fed named Antheil (Anthony Zerbe). The drug deal is his, but guess what? Ray ain't rolling over.. “I spent my whole life takin' shit from inferior people. No more!”
Who'll Stop the Rain has a lot going for it, but above all it's an actor's movie. I've already named the principal cast, and Nick Nolte has long since proven his acting ability and his presence but please trust me that his Ray Hicks will bowl you over anyway. At the time Nolte was considered a pretty boy lightweight, a romantic leading man and not up for much more. Best known for The Deep, Rich Man Poor Man, and a Clairol hair lightener ad, his total ownership of Hicks was a revelation. He plays Hicks like a sore tooth best left alone. Treated gently he won't flare up on you. He can be a nice guy but there's a raw fragility to his carefully built self-esteem as if it is something he will lose the thread of if he doesn't react immediately and harshly to anything and everything that offends his sensibilities. Nolte finds that note and makes Hicks a force to be reckoned with. It's his movie, and much as I love 48 Hours I'll take this one for pure Nolte.
I should talk about Michael Moriarty as John next – the story is a look at the moral decay setting in with Vietnam and alienation, Hicks as the warrior soul with mission creep and Moriarty the pacifist conscience giving in to futility. There may be a bit of bias here as Hicks is unfailingly noble even as his reactions are a bit unhinged, and John Converse is pacifist to a fault, ultimately coming across as pathetic or despicable in the hands of Antheil's hired goons as they drag him in search of the fled Ray and Marge. Moriarty gives John a resigned air just spilling over into self-pity, hiding behind the last shreds of dignity. It's the right touch that lends a moment of contrast later when he sees his wife getting high and looks on in horrified self-realization at what he's done. An aspiring author, he's written a wartime play in which the protagonist is a version of himself. Antheil comments that the character isn't sympathetic: 'Why doesn't he do something?” Both Hicks and Converse, in their separate ways, want to vindicate their ideals and take a stand against “them” but neither knows who “they” are anymore.
That's all there, but when it comes right down to it the core of the film lies in the chemistry that emerges between Nolte and Tuesday Weld as Hicks takes Marge on the lam with a horde of unwanted heroin to get rid of. Marge would like to just dump the stuff but Hicks is locked into making some kind of deal because...well, just because. It's the principle of the thing. He agreed to the mission and he's gonna see it through no matter how fucked up or wildly astray it goes. That means his taking on the role of guardian and companion to Marge, helping see her through her addiction and keeping alive her hope of seeing her husband and child safe again. For her part, she has to navigate his moods and see the nobility on the man, not an easy task given interludes like the one with Eddie Peace, a Hollywood-schmoozy lowlife who promises to deal the skag but would rather play amusing games with Hicks and his prospective clients both. Charles Haid gives a brief gem of a performance as Eddie, oily and unpredictable. The scene brings out the worst in Ray who declares them all Martians after turning their lark into a nightmare.
Weld gives her role a decency and intelligence where many actors would have gone for a generic strung-out performance.
What develops between Marge and Ray is a respect that borders on an unspoken love. Thanks to cinematographer Richard H. Kline, their scenes together have a quiet intimacy that poses them as lovers not quite physically interacting except in psychic support of each other. If Ray's mission ultimately is to keep Marge alive, you end up emotionally invested in wanting the two of them happy and safe.
I don't know the ins and outs of directing enough to examine how director Karel Reisz gets us there, but he does. From rainy Saigon evenings to California suburbs, naval yards and an old Jesuit mission in the hills (based on the Kesey compound where the Merry Pranksters tried to drown their worldly worries in revelry), Reisz and Kline show as strong a knack for location as Reisz does for getting the best performances from his actors. The script also excels - written by author Robert Stone from his novel 'Dog Soldiers', his dialog has a wonderful lyrical quality to it that's often quotable and lends the cast plenty to work with. I've read the novel and found it to have a rather snarkier sense of humor than is apparent in the movie, at least in the passages that deal with Converse. Some of that humor makes it into the film in the form of Antheil's pair of goons Danskin and Smitty (Richard Masur and Ray Sharkey). Sharkey is an ex-con who would like to be important if only his natural inferiority would get out of his way, perpetually overshadowed and abused by the amiably sociopathic Danskin (“Most people will hit you when they lose at chess. Danskin hits you when he wins!”) Danskin's nature is perfectly reflected by the casting of perennial nice-guy Richard Masur, who will pleasantly call you 'bubbie” while he sits you down on a hot oven burner. These two are clowns you don't dare laugh at.
Rounding out the cast is Anthony Zerbe as Antheil... are you familiar with Zerbe? If you are, then you know what you're getting. The guy has a wry, sardonic edge as capable of being sympathetic as threatening, he can get by on a look and turn of phrase. Honestly, I can't think of one standout performance of his yet he's one of my favorite personae on film and television – pure charisma.
Let me caution you about the transfer. I have the DVD issued by MGM in 2001, and while most of the film looks great (original aspect ratio 1.85:1, non-anamorphic) the first 16 or 17 minutes are inexplicably just out of focus. This is clearly not deliberate as evidenced by the too-soft titles text, though it could be argued as reflecting the fuzzy morals of Vietnam where the movie opens. Saigon in the rain at night and Moriarty standing at the gate to a private estate...already atmospheric, these shots would be even tastier if MGM would give the movie the care it deserves. This problem was present as well on the earlier VHS release.
I have loved this overlooked gem since first seeing it on cable in 1980. Please, give it a shot. It deserves a revival.
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