Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

This was a bit of a strange movie. After a man barges into a church where Clint Eastwood is the pastor and tries to shoot him, the film spends the next 30 minutes on Eastwood and Jeff Bridges roaming across the western U.S., running into oddballs. I almost thought it was going to end up being one of those comedies about people having trouble trying to travel long distances, but there are two more guys after Eastwood that keep popping up.

Then it shifts into a heist movie, although it spends more time on the odd jobs they do to make enough money to get what they need for the heist than on the actual planning. That at least makes some sense in-story.

Eastwood (as Thunderbolt, or Johnny) spends most of the movie either faintly amused or mildly annoyed. He's just too tired for anything to get to him any more than that. Bridges (Lightfoot) is usually very glib and unconcerned with dangers. Constantly flirting*, always with some little saying or quip, enthusiastic about whatever he's mixed up in. George Kennedy (Red) is usually pissed off, mostly at Lightfoot once they meet, but in general he's very impatient and irritable. Early in the movie, I was impressed by how much he seemed to be playing a barely suppressed ball of rage, but as the story progresses, he's almost comical. He could kill Eastwood and Bridges, but wants to fistfight Eastwood, and the fight has to end because his asthma acts up. Then all four of them sit by a river and talk for a while. Dudes not knowing how to just talk about what bothers them.

The movie is like that a lot. It feels absurd - the heist centers on a 20mm cannon and Lightfoot dressing as a woman - and sometimes it gets played for laughs, and other times like it's serious. Maybe to emphasize the ridiculous aspect of all this.Thunderbolt, Red, and Goody ultimately can't move on, accept they gave it a shot and it didn't pan out, and just deal with. They just have to keep trying. Lightfoot is so used to just winging everything and getting away with it, he doesn't grasp the seriousness of anything until its too late. By the time he does, he's in for a penny, in for a pound, as he put it.

* I think my favorite scene was when he's driving a delivery van and catcalls a lady on a motorcycle next to him. She pulls a hammer from somewhere and just starts whaling on the side of the van with it while they drive down the highway.