Michael Cimino could have done worse for his first directing gig — a big Clint Eastwood-Jeff Bridges buddy picture with guaranteed major attention. It’s a simple crime caper for simple audiences, and he pulls it off in style. The Sunday movie supplements celebrated Cimino as a great new talent. His picture still looks handsome and it runs like a Swiss watch — the writer-director even has his vulgar comedy down pat, giving bad guy George Kennedy a few memorable choice bits to play.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date November 12, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis, Catherine Bach, Gary Busey, Burton Gilliam, Roy Jenson, Bill McKinney, Vic Tayback, Dub Taylor, Gregory Walcott.
Cinematography: Frank Stanley
Art Direction by Tambi Larsen
Film Editor: Ferris Webster
Original Music: Dee Barton
Produced by Robert Daley
Written and Directed...
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1974 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 115 min. / Street Date November 12, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges, George Kennedy, Geoffrey Lewis, Catherine Bach, Gary Busey, Burton Gilliam, Roy Jenson, Bill McKinney, Vic Tayback, Dub Taylor, Gregory Walcott.
Cinematography: Frank Stanley
Art Direction by Tambi Larsen
Film Editor: Ferris Webster
Original Music: Dee Barton
Produced by Robert Daley
Written and Directed...
- 11/23/2019
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
(Michael Cimino, Second Sight, 18, 1974)
An Ivy League graduate who became a successful director of commercials, Michael Cimino secured world fame for the expansive The Deer Hunter and enduring notoriety for the epic western Heaven's Gate. But his big break came in 1973 after co-writing two screenplays, the off-beat sci-fi Silent Running and Magnum Force, a sequel to Dirty Harry. His next script was not only acquired by Clint Eastwood as a vehicle for himself but also persuaded the star to let him direct it.
Inspired by Captain Lightfoot, a 1955 Douglas Sirk picture about 19th-century Irish highwaymen, it's a knowing, fast-moving combination of road movie and heist thriller, a bromance as we'd now call it, with homoerotic and homophobic undertones. It's set entirely in the beautiful, thinly populated "big sky country" of Idaho and Montana. On the soundtrack there's twanging country music by Dee Barton, who wrote the score for Eastwood's Play Misty for Me...
An Ivy League graduate who became a successful director of commercials, Michael Cimino secured world fame for the expansive The Deer Hunter and enduring notoriety for the epic western Heaven's Gate. But his big break came in 1973 after co-writing two screenplays, the off-beat sci-fi Silent Running and Magnum Force, a sequel to Dirty Harry. His next script was not only acquired by Clint Eastwood as a vehicle for himself but also persuaded the star to let him direct it.
Inspired by Captain Lightfoot, a 1955 Douglas Sirk picture about 19th-century Irish highwaymen, it's a knowing, fast-moving combination of road movie and heist thriller, a bromance as we'd now call it, with homoerotic and homophobic undertones. It's set entirely in the beautiful, thinly populated "big sky country" of Idaho and Montana. On the soundtrack there's twanging country music by Dee Barton, who wrote the score for Eastwood's Play Misty for Me...
- 7/5/2014
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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