Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is a 1974 American crime action comedy film written and directed by Michael Cimino in his directorial debut. Clint Eastwood stars as John "Thunderbolt" Doherty, a disguised preacher who is almost killed before being unintentionally rescued by a young car thief named "Lightfoot" (Jeff Bridges), who partners with him in a series of thefts. "Thunderbolt" is soon found to be a fugitive bank robber, who is being hunted by his former gang. George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis also feature.
Filmed in various locations of Montana, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was produced by Eastwood's production company, Malpaso Productions, and released through United Artists. The film grossed $25 million at the box office on a budget of $2.2–4 million, and was positively received by critics. Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film.
Plot A young ne'er-do-well who goes by the name Lightfoot cheerfully steals a car from an enraged dealer's lot. Elsewhere, an assassin attempts to shoot a preacher, who is delivering a sermon at his pulpit. The preacher escapes on foot. Lightfoot, who happens to be driving by, inadvertently rescues the preacher by running over his pursuer and giving the preacher a lift. They steal a series of cars, patronize prostitutes, and escape another attempt on their lives by two men.
Lightfoot learns that the "minister" John Doherty is a notorious bank robber, known as "the Thunderbolt" for his use of an Oerlikon 20 mm cannon to break into a safe, who has been hiding out in the guise of a clergyman following the robbery of a Montana bank. Thunderbolt tells Lightfoot that the members of his gang mistakenly think Thunderbolt double-crossed them and kept the money for himself. Thunderbolt is the only member of the gang who knows where the loot is hidden. Lightfoot and he journey to Warsaw, Montana, to retrieve the money hidden behind a chalkboard inside an old one-room school. They discover the schoolhouse has been replaced by a brand-new school with no indication of what happened to the previous school or its looted treasure.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot are abducted by the men who were pursuing them — the vicious Red Leary and the gentle Eddie Goody. After being forced to drive to a remote location, Thunderbolt wins a fistfight with Red, after which Thunderbolt explains that he never betrayed the gang. Lightfoot proposes another heist, namely, robbing the same company as before, but without the gang's electronics expert Dunlop, whom Lightfoot hit and killed with his car. In the city where the bank is located, the men find jobs to raise money for needed equipment while they plan the heist.
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. Like the first heist, Thunderbolt uses an antiaircraft cannon to breach the vault's wall, and the gang escapes with the loot. They flee in the car, with Red and Goody in the trunk, to a nearby drive-in movie in progress.
After hearing Red sneeze from the trunk and seeing a shirttail protruding from the trunk lid, the theater manager suspects someone is hiding in the trunk to avoid paying and so goes to investigate. As wailing police cars begin to close in on the drive-in theater and as the theater manager gets nearer, Red becomes increasingly agitated and Thunderbolt drives out of the drive-in, encountering police at the exit. During the ensuing chase, Goody is shot as the police open fire on the vehicle. Red heartlessly tosses the badly wounded Goody out into the road, where he takes a few breaths and then dies.
Red then forces Thunderbolt and Lightfoot to stop the car. He pistol whips them both, knocking them unconscious, and kicks Lightfoot in the head and body several times, severely injuring him. Red takes off with the loot in the getaway car, but is again pursued by police, several of whom he shoots and either kills or injures. He crashes the car under fire into the store where he'd been working during the heist prep, and the store's watchdog rears up and kills him by tearing his throat out.
A conscious and physically-OK Thunderbolt and a clearly injured Lightfoot make their way toward the highway, where they hitch a ride the next morning and are dropped off near Warsaw, Montana. They stumble upon the vanished original 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. As the two men retrieve the stolen money, Lightfoot has hearing and balance lapses that concern Thunderbolt.
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. Thunderbolt snaps his cigar in half, as it is no longer a celebration, and with his dead partner beside him, drives off down the Interstate and into an uncertain future.
Cast
Production Development and screenplay Michael Cimino wrote the script on spec, with Clint Eastwood in mind. Cimino's agent, Stan Kamen of the William Morris Agency, came up with the idea of packaging the film with him, Jeff Bridges and Eastwood.McGilligan, p. 237 Cimino had also co-written (with John Milius) the screenplay for the second Dirty Harry movie, Magnum Force, starring Eastwood. The latter was now available after ultimately turning down the lead role in Charley Varrick, just as production was nearly ready to begin. Due to the great financial success of Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider, road pictures were a popular genre in Hollywood at that time. Eastwood himself, had been looking for a road movie.Eliot, p. 154 Agent Leonard Hirshan brought the script to Eastwood from fellow agent Kamen.Eliot, p. 153 After reading the script, Eastwood liked it so much that he intended to direct it himself. However, after meeting Cimino, Eastwood decided to give him the directing job instead, which was Cimino's big break and feature-film directorial debut.Garbarino, Steve (March 2002). "Michael Cimino's Final Cut". Vanity Fair (499): pp. 232-235+250-252. Retrieved September 23, 2010. Cimino later said that if it was not for Eastwood, he never would have had a career in film.DVD commentary by director Michael Cimino on Year of the Dragon. Located on the Region 1 DVD of Year of the Dragon. Cimino patterned Thunderbolt after one of his favorite '50s films, Captain Lightfoot."Michael Cimino – Biography". MSN Movies. Retrieved September 23, 2010. The music was composed by Dee Barton but the end titles song "Where Do I Go From Here?" was composed and performed by Paul Williams.
In the diner scene, Eastwood's character John "Thunderbolt" Doherty recites the opening lines of Thomas McGrath's "Poor John Luck...". McGrath collaborated with Cimino on several early projects.
Shooting 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.McGilligan (1999), p. 239 The film was shot in 47 days from July to September 1973.Bach, p. 141 It was filmed in Fort Benton, Wolf Creek, Great Falls, and Hobson. St. John's Lutheran Church in Hobson was used for the opening scene. The imaginary freeway exit signage (Warsaw Exit 250) for the fictional town of Warsaw, was in reality, the Interstate 15 exit for Dearborn, an unincorporated community that straddles the Cascade–Lewis and Clark County line. The scene where Thunderbolt recovers the money from the one-room schoolhouse was filmed at the rest stop just south of Exit 240, which is the exit for Dearborn.Dearborn, Cascade County MT Google Maps (accessed September 4th, 2019)
Eastwood did not like to do any more than three takes on any given shot, according to co-star Bridges. "I would always go to Mike and say 'I think I can do one more. I got an idea.' And Mike would say 'I gotta ask Clint.' Clint would say, 'Give the kid a shot.'"Bridges, Jeff (actor); Okun, Charles ("Cimino production manager, 64'-78'"); Dafoe, Willem (narrator); Epstein, Michael (director). (2004). Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate. [Television Production]. Viewfinder Productions. Charles Okun, first assistant director on Thunderbolt, added, "Clint was the only guy that ever said 'no'. Michael said 'OK, let's go for another take.' It was take four, Clint would say 'No we got enough. We got it.' [...] And if [Cimino] took too long to get it ready, [Clint] would say, 'It's good, let's go.'" Cimino would later cite his ability to set up and film quickly on this production when the filming of his 1980 movie Heaven's Gate was in such trouble that United Artists executives gave him two choices: deliver a three-hour cut within a new budget parameter or be fired from the production altogether.
Release Thunderbolt was released on May 22, 1974. The film grossed $9 million in rentals on its initial theatrical release"All-time Film Rental Champs", Variety, January 7, 1976, pg 44. and eventually grossed $25 million in the United States,Eliot, p. 155 making it the 17th highest-grossing film of 1974. 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.Bach, p. 83Hughes, p.170 According to author Marc Eliot, Eastwood perceived himself as being upstaged by Bridges.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was released to DVD by MGM Home Video on June 13, 2000, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD and also by Twilight Time on February 11, 2014, as a Region A Blu-ray.
Reception 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."Thompson, Howard (May 24, 1974). "Engaging 'Thunderbolt and Lightfoot'". The New York Times. 23. Arthur D. Murphy of Variety called it "an overlong, sometimes hilariously vulgar comedy-drama, about the restaging of a difficult safecracking heist. 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."
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. Eastwood and Bridges try to build an older-younger brother relationship during the film; it is lost, however, amid all the killings and explosions."Siskel, Gene (May 27, 1974). "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 9. 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."Thomas, Kevin (May 22, 1974). "Second Try at Bank Heist". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 16.