Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

This film is marketed and broadly categorized as an action comedy centered around a heist. I did not find it funny, it had next to no action, and the heist was the most simplistic and uninteresting heist maybe ever put to screen. The film noodles around doing nothing for a very long time, takes what should have been the bulk of the movie and tries to shove it all into the last 30 minutes of the picture, and then ends in the most 70s Hollywood way possible: with a huge downer ending that is supposed to make you feel some kind of way. Needless to say, I did not enjoy Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

The early parts of the film reminded me of Easy Rider, another film I don’t particularly care for, in that our two sleazy leads end up on some sort of vaguely purposeless road trip in which they encounter a number of strange characters of American counterculture during their journey. At least this film, unlike Easy Rider, is shot and edited by someone whose talents appear to have matured beyond the level of a first year film student. Not that that turns the project around, mind you, just that it is an improvement.

Weirdly, the film also reminded me of The Muppet Movie in that each of these counterculture encounters isn’t as serious and culturally revelatory as in Easy Rider, but are rather played for laughs like in the Muppets, with surprisingly similar level of absurdity. Both pictures feature a large number of hits to the head too but, of course, the human characters can’t take the same level of abuse as the felt puppets. Also, guns. There are a lot more guns in Thunderfoot.

The other main attempt at humor, beyond these little strange road moments, is often the rather dated and tactless shock of female nudity, pornography, and feminine sexuality. Seeing a pudgy security guard hiding nudies in his newspaper so he can ogle a model’s breasts while on duty is just not cutting it in the humor department, at least for me. Nor is the mere act of putting Jeff Bridges in a dress.

As for the action, the moments of excitement are extremely few and far between. There is a small amount of gunfire, a few moments of fast car driving, and a wild, whirlwind of a finale that has a little of both, but the number and length of the action beats are practically non-existent. Not that such a heist movie must have action, it is not the filmmaker’s fault that it might have been mismarketed after all, but the heist isn’t very good either.

Heist movies are fun when they are these intricately planned things where we, the audience, get a certain amount of our joy from seeing a clever plan put into action. Ocean’s Eleven is great for a lot of reasons, but one of its enduring strengths is the joy of seeing the planning and eventual execution of such a magnificent clockwork device that puts everyone in their right place at the right time to make it all work, and cover all contingencies, buoyed by Soderbergh’s slick and stylish direction and cinematography. Thunderbolt is just a bunch of guys knocking other guys out or threatening them at gunpoint. Where is the joy in that?

The film’s last remaining attempt at cohesion is in its buddy criminal, as opposed to buddy cop, central pair: too unlikely partners who come together by chance but ultimately form an intensely strong bond. Clint Eastwood, playing the older experienced bank robber, and Jeff Bridges, playing the younger con man and petty thief, both basically do their own schtick, with Eastwood gruff and taciturn and Bridges goofy and jovial. While this creates a nice contrast between the two, the actual chemistry between them, and therefore the believability of their growing friendship, simply wasn’t there for me. There are a few moments where their bond feels genuine, but most of the time they come across as just two dudes who happen to hang around each other.

This will probably earn me some ire among film lovers, similar to my hot talks on Easy Rider alluded to above, but I’ve seen two Michael Cimino movies and disliked them both. I found Deer Hunter to be an overlong, unfocused, directionless bore in which next to nothing happens, remembered largely for the Russian roulette scenes that take up barely a fraction of the actual run time of the picture. Thunderbolt similarly has a lot of proverbial film passing through the projector without much happening, but at least this film is an hour shorter, so on a percentage basis it at least feels like there is more going on.

Would Recommend: If you love 70s movies for the bleak “realness.”

Would Not Recommend: If you believe heist movies are best when they are about bringing together a highly coordinated and skilled team to execute a daring and clever plan.