Distant Thunder

A helpful co-worker tells a Vietnam vet, “Far as I’m concerned, you guys have a right to be nuts.” This is the level of dubious sympathy that the world affords the veterans in Distant Thunder, a heartfelt film about the problems of Vietnam vets who have retreated from society.

They are called “bush vets,” these men who have taken their scars and withdrawn into the forests of the Olympic Peninsula. The film sketches a small community of them, self-sufficient and isolated. As the movie opens, one man ends his despair by walking into a moving train. This shocks Mark Lambert (John Lithgow) into walking out of the forest, and back into civilization.

The film then traces his struggle to fit himself back in, especially his attempt to re-establish contact with his son (Ralph Macchio), whom he has not seen in many years. With the help of a kind stranger (Kerrie Keane), Lambert gets a job with the logging company and appears to be on his way back.

But the trauma of actually confronting his son drives him into the woods again, and the last act of the movie is set there. Thanks to a tortured vet on the loose, this means the last act can be dominated by a violently dramatic situation; Lambert must protect his son from harm. It’s dramatic, but it’s contrived.

That’s too bad, and it’s also too bad the film has the uninspired direction of Rick Rosenthal (Bad Boys), who brings a pedestrian approach to the material. No question, this is a subject fraught with possibilities, and Lithgow is actor enough to create a compelling character; his vet is a husky-voiced relic with shadows in his eyes.

Rosenthal distracts our attention with the other bush vets, who are more disturbed than Lambert. Denis Arndt, an accomplished Northwest stage actor who is himself a Vietnam veteran, plays the most florid of the men, and Arndt’s crazy energy is often riveting. He barks out dislocated laughter, and he serves up meals of Twinkies and Skittles.

Arndt, skipping madly through a campfire, even steals the film’s big revelation scene, in which Lambert tells a war story, the tale that haunts him the most. Even this is something of a familiar horror story; the movie never quite comes up with anything new. (By the way, it was shot in British Columbia, not Washington. The lure of the Canadian dollar remains irresistible.)

Clearly, Distant Thunder means well, and there is an anchor here in Lithgow’s performance. But the movie has the unintentional effect of emphasizing the craziness of the bush vets, regardless of the humanity of Lithgow’s character. Despite its obvious intention of deepening understanding, it might have the effect of making these men seem just that much more bizarre, and pushing them further into their green forest ghetto.

First published in The Herald, November 1988

The cast also includes Janet Margolin, Jamey Sheridan, and Tom Bower; music by Maurice Jarre. Arndt was very well-known in Seattle live-theater circles, and I saw him onstage at least a half-dozen times over the years (including, if I’m remembering right, as Iago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland). This movie seems to have jump-started his screen career, where he has many credits, mostly in TV. Another live-theater bell rung here: the subject matter is reminiscent of Lanford Wilson’s play Redwood Curtain, which I happened to see in a pre-Broadway run in Seattle, with an unforgettable performance by David Morse as a troubled vet living in the forest.