Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime comedy film written and directed by Michael Cimino and starring Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis.
[7] The film follows John "Thunderbolt" Doherty, a disguised preacher who is almost killed before being unintentionally rescued by a young car thief named "Lightfoot", who partners with him in a series of thefts.
When the robbery begins, Thunderbolt and Red hold the vault manager at gunpoint in his home and force him to reveal the access codes to the outer doors of the safe.
Lightfoot, cross-dressing as a woman, distracts the Western Union office's security guard, deactivates the ensuing alarm, and is picked up by Goody.
They hitch a ride the next morning and are dropped off near Warsaw, Montana, where they stumble upon the one-room schoolhouse, which is now a historical monument on the side of a highway, having been moved there from its original location after the first heist.
Thunderbolt buys a new Cadillac convertible with cash, something Lightfoot said he had always wanted to do, and picks up his waiting partner, who is gradually losing control of the left side of his body.
As they drive away celebrating their success with cigars, Lightfoot, in obvious distress, tells Thunderbolt in a slurred voice how proud he is of their accomplishments, then slumps over and dies.
[10] Due to the great financial success of Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, road pictures were a popular genre in Hollywood at that time.
Although Eastwood generally refused to spend much time in scouting for locations, particularly unfamiliar ones, Cimino and Eastwood's producer Robert Daley traveled extensively around the Big Sky Country in Montana for thousands of miles and eventually decided on the Great Falls area and to shoot the film in the towns of Ulm, Hobson, Fort Benton, Augusta and Choteau and surrounding mountainous countryside.
[21] The film did respectable box office business, and the studio profited, but Clint Eastwood vowed never to work with the movie's distributor United Artists again due to what he felt was bad promotion.
Howard Thompson of The New York Times praised the film as "a funny, tough-fibered crime comedy with an unobtrusive edge of drama.
With Clint Eastwood as an older, wise thief and Jeff Bridges as his grinning apprentice, the picture is consistently entertaining and interesting.
Debuting director Michael Cimino, who also wrote the rambling, anticlimactic script, obtained superior performances from Eastwood, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis and especially Jeff Bridges, outstanding as a young drifter who joins the gang.
"[25] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote that "one is left wondering what attracted these actors to a story that leaves every flash of humanity for a protracted robbery, shootout, or some manner of cruelty.
"[26] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "a rambunctious and surprisingly touching movie", adding that "writer Michael Cimino, in a potent directorial debut, displays a clear, concise style and very impressive control.
"[16] Leonard Maltin gave the film three out of four stars, describing it as "Colorful, tough melodrama-comedy with good characterizations; Lewis is particularly fine, but Bridges steals the picture.
The website's consensus is: "This likable buddy/road picture deftly mixes action and comedy, and features excellent work from stars Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges and first-time director Michael Cimino.
[37] Cultural critic Peter Biskind wrote that the film "is distinguished from its predecessors largely by the audacity with which it plays with the barely submerged homosexual element in the male friendship formula, and by its frank and undisguised contempt for heterosexuality".