Thunderbolt and Lightfoot **** (1974, Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis, Catherine Bach, Gary Busey) – Classic Movie Review 3167

Young writer-director Michael Cimino’s exciting 1974 thriller finds Clint Eastwood on his best form as Thunderbolt, a hardened artilleryman bank robber who flees from jail, chums up with Lightfoot, an aimless, flippant, irresponsible, irreverent young punk (Jeff Bridges) and joins a couple of his wild old crooked partners, Red Leary and Eddie Goody (George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis), to try to recover the hidden swag from their daring bank heist seven years earlier.

In that robbery they used an anti-tank gun to blow open the vault. Unable to find the loot from the original heist, hidden behind a school chalkboard, the robbers temporarily put aside their mutual suspicions to repeat the crime in a daring new heist.

After co-scripting Eastwood’s Dirty Harry sequel Magnum Force, Cimino makes a very bright, confident directorial début, while and his expert and imaginative screen-writing breathes fresh life into a derivative caper thriller plot, making it well-plotted, funny and likeable as well as credibly tough. And Cimino even manages to handle the uncomfortable shifts from comedy to tragedy effortlessly and quite comfortably.

In 1975, young Jeff Bridges picked up his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his richly nuanced, scene-grabbing performance as Lightfoot. It was the nearest this fine movie came to any award. The Last Picture Show (1971) is Bridges’s first Oscar nomination, followed by Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974), Starman (1984), The Contender (2000) and True Grit (2010). He won Best Actor for Crazy Heart (2009).

Also in the cast are Catherine Bach as Melody, Gary Busey as Curly, Roy Jenson as Dunlop, Dub Taylor as Station Attendant, Vic Tayback as Mario Pinski, Gregory Walcott as Used Car Salesman, Jack Dodson as Vault Manager, Eugene Elman as Tourist, Burton Gilliam as Welder, Claudia Lennear as Secretary and Bill McKinney as Crazy Driver.

The TV version edits for the strong language (four uses of the F word) but not the violence or sex. The original UK rating was X with the UK 1986 video rating 18.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3167

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