\nIn 1973, Clint Eastwood, who was already a major star, produced and acted in Michael Cimino\u2019s first film as a director, \u201cThunderbolt and Lightfoot.\u201d It offered more than a fine role for Eastwood; it was one of the great directorial d\u00e9buts of the New Hollywood era. \u201cThunderbolt and Lightfoot\u201d plays July 2 at BAM Cin\u00e9matek in a series of heist movies co-programmed by Edgar Wright (June 27-July 23), who directed a new entry in the genre, \u201cBaby Driver,\u201d opening this week. Cimino\u2019s film is a heist movie with a difference: it withholds the crime story until midway through the film. Before that, it\u2019s a rough-and-tumble, back-road Northwest adventure that\u2019s also a buddy comedy, even a proto-bromance.\n
The movie, which Cimino also wrote, is loosely based on, and named after, two infamous early-nineteenth-century Irish bandits. Eastwood plays John (Thunderbolt) Doherty, an Idaho country preacher who\u2019s actually a bank robber in hiding. Jeff Bridges, who was twenty-four at the time, plays Lightfoot, a fast-talking, freewheeling, fun-loving drifter and grifter. The two men meet cute when Thunderbolt\u2019s sermon is interrupted by a gunman and he dashes from his crowded church. Lightfoot, speeding on a country road in a stolen muscle car, picks up the fleeing Thunderbolt and outdrives the gunman for kicks\u2014and experiences a sort of fraternal love at first sight for his terse, coolly confident and worldly-wise older passenger.\n
\n
Ditching another stolen car, Lightfoot leads Thunderbolt into Hell\u2019s Canyon, on the Snake River, where, the young man says, \u201cUp here, people\u2019s business is nobody\u2019s but their own.\u201d But trouble ensues when Thunderbolt\u2019s former partners in crime turn up\u2014the resentful and brutal Red (George Kennedy) and Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), whose benighted lumpishness contrasts dismally with Thunderbolt\u2019s bladelike precision and Lightfoot\u2019s carefree, sexually uninhibited insolence. After a near-deadly tangle, they put their differences aside to undertake a new robbery\u2014of an armored-truck depot\u2014in a small Montana town. Accumulating know-how and equipment (including an anti-tank cannon), the four men live in a simulacrum of domesticity that seethes with ambient violence and erotic tension. As Thunderbolt details to Lightfoot the obstacles they face\u2014\u201cmicrophones, electric eyes, pressure-sensitive mats, vibration detectors, tear gas, and even thermostats\u201d\u2014Lightfoot beams at him blissfully.\n
Cimino blends the split-second criminal plot with wild humor. Lightfoot gets called out on his macho posturing by a woman with a hammer (no one gets hurt), but Cimino also takes deadly seriously the sort of beat-downs that are usually played for laughs. The action, however, is inseparable from Cimino\u2019s distinctive view of the untamed landscapes. The film\u2019s images are filled with a pointillistic profusion of detail\u2014wheat stalks at the roadside, a modern bridge\u2019s metallic latticework, even the duo\u2019s jazzily patterned shirts\u2014that\u2019s as alluring as it is nerve-jangling. Cimino\u2019s wide-open West is a wonder and a snare, blending freedom and cruelty, innocence and ignorance; its expanses seem blood-soaked and death-haunted. With its mix of spectacle and intimacy, exuberance and tragedy, \u201cThunderbolt and Lightfoot\u201d points ahead to the radical extremes of Cimino\u2019s 1980 masterwork, \u201cHeaven\u2019s Gate.\u201d\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges\u2019s Modern Western In 1973, Clint Eastwood, who was already a major star, produced and acted in Michael Cimino\u2019s first film as a director, \u201cThunderbolt and Lightfoot.\u201d It offered more than a fine role for Eastwood; it was one of the great directorial d\u00e9buts of the New Hollywood era. \u201cThunderbolt and\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":96349,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[670],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-96346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/675.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":96350,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96346\/revisions\/96350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justmetalking.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}