cult film freak: CANVASING THE UNIQUE CAPER OF 'THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT'

Title: THUNDERBOLT & LIGHTFOOT Director: Michael Cimino Stars: Clint Eastwood Year: 1974 Score: ****

There's a quote in the 1974 cult action flick THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT about an experienced ex-bank robber played by Clint Eastwood teamed with a young freewheeling Jeff Bridges...

Ironically "Stick with me, kid, you're gonna live forever" is young Jeff's line as Lightfoot to Clint's Thunderbolt since the enigmatic, offbeat youngster speaks in almost all hackneyed adages...

Clint Eastwood & Jeff Bridges are Thunderbolt & Lightfoot

Quips ranging from "You're only as old as you look" to "In for a penny, in for a pound" to "A rolling stone gathers no moss," he's the most interesting and offbeat aspect in an Eastwood vehicle that's miles beyond his other action-genre Modern Westerns. But in a visual, stylistic sense, the director (and writer) makes all the difference...

Future THE DEER HUNTER Oscar winner and more relevant here, the co-writer of Dirty Harry's MAGNUM FORCE a year before, Michael Cimino captures the gorgeous Montana landscape ranging from endless wheat fields to lake-viewed mountains to vast rolling hills, as if this were actually a genuine Cowboy classic ala John Ford...

George Kennedy in THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT

Beyond a cranked-up rabbit-shooting hillbilly to a book-up with gorgeous starlets Catherine Bach and June Farchild, the rural backdrop frames the human characters, especially during the first half with various chase scenes as our heroes are stalked by a formidable villain... soon one of the "good guys," for a while... in George Kennedy, along with sidekick/driver Geoffrey Lewis (a good actor with a few misplaced adlibs), former partners of Eastwood, and with Bridges they wind up partnered-up, again, to rob a government vault: the same one, in fact, and in the same fashion...

Kennedy's hard-nosed Red and Eastwood's fair-minded Thunderbolt go back to Korea, and there's an anti-chemistry between these equally tough guys, who both fear and respect each other. And this is an almost equal ensemble piece...

Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges play Thunderbolt & Lightfoot

All four men get their own jobs in a small town during the second half, with even more intriguing fun in the heist's build-up/planning stages than when things come to a head: Which includes a long and intentionally uncomfortable death both bizarre and heartbreaking, and even perhaps unnecessary since the titular pair could have done so much more...

Funny how sometimes the wrong films result in sequels: Then again, THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT is a unique and vulnerable "muscle movie" that stands completely on its own, twofold.