Back before he became the Oscar-winning elder statesmen of meaningful movies (Letters from Iwo Jima, Million Dollar Baby), Clint Eastwood made a career out of quirky character-driven action flicks that felt more like really well done home movies than big budget Hollywood productions. They all featured pretty much the same cast of Clint and his friends – character actors Geoffrey Lewis, Bill McKinney and Gregory Walcott to name a few – and told pretty much the same story of a bunch of good old boys taking on the system and, after a few smack downs, triumphing in the final reel.Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is cut from the same cloth of these classic Clint movies, with the notable exception of tossing a young Jeff Bridges into the mix. The result was not only one of the best of Clint’s films from that era, but a performance good enough to garner Bridges an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor (He lost to Robert De Niro and Godfather II).
The plot to Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is, to be honest, silly. A group of robbers band together to break into an armory in Montana using a giant cannon to blow a hole in the side of the safe. It’s a pretty gutsy plan but they have faith that it will work because they did it a few years before – they just lost the money from that heist and need to do it again.
Like I said, it’s silly.
But the performances are good and director Michael Cimino does a good job of balancing the action and humor in the film.
Starring Clint Eastwood,Jeff Bridges.
IMDB Site.
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