Disc Reviews

Thunderbolt & Lightfoot Blu-Ray Review

14th Jun 2014

New from Second Sight, we have a treat making its UK Blu-ray debut: Thunderbolt & Lightfoot.

Before The Deer Hunter made him famous a few years later; Writer/Director Michael Cimino made his feature film debut with this now semi-forgotten little gem of a movie.

Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges star as the oddly named title characters, with Geoffrey Lewis and George Kennedy providing very strong supporting performances. It also features a brief but memorable appearance by a pre Dukes of Hazard Catherine Bach. Incidentally, Bach gets a surprisingly high billing on the credits, which belies her actual screen time. I always wondered if there was supposed to be more to her part than we actually ended up with, but that’s a question for another time…

Moving on.

So Is it a road movie? Is it a heist movie? Well it’s both, and It’s most definitely a buddy movie. It’s dramatic, it’s tragic, and it’s also really fun, and funny too, despite a typically 70s downbeat ending. There’s characterisation aplenty and Bridges’ performance even garnered him an oscar nomination.

Before we go any further; it is worth mentioning that we actually covered Thunderbolt & Lightfoot here on the site, as part of our extensive Clint Eastwood series of retrospectives a while back. So if you’d like a more detailed and personal accounting of the movie, and it’s continuing legacy; then by all means go and check that out.

For now, let us continue with a brief synopsis before discussing the Blu-ray itself.

Basically, Eastwood and Bridges strike up an unlikely friendship after encountering one another after the latter has stolen a car, and the former (dressed as a preacher) is running for his life from an unknown gunman.

Turns out Thunderbolt is a semi-infamous bank robber, who is being hunted by his former cohorts who mistakenly believe he ratted them out and stole the money from their last job. The truth is that the money was hidden, and somehow lost. Eventually he makes peace with Red and Goody (Kennedy and Lewis), and with Lightfoot under his wing, and along for the ride; form an uneasy alliance with them. The hair brained intention of this alliance being to pull the exact same bank job as they had years before.

Although planned and executed almost to the letter; things inevitably go awry, and take a dramatic and tragic turn towards a delightfully bittersweet denouement.

Once again, if you would like more commentary on the movie, then please check out the retrospective.

Let’s move on to the Blu-ray presentation itself.

Firstly, the movie looks pretty damn good, and belies it’s 1974 vintage from a certain point of view. The conceit with Blu-ray is always that it can somehow magically make a grainy old picture look crystal clear and fabulous. Of course it doesn’t quite work like that, and Thunderbolt & Lightfoot is not going to win any awards for high definition movie of the year. Our yardstick as ever, is the superb Blu-ray restoration of Jaws. However it is grossly uncharitable to compare the two, as they do not exist on a level playing field in terms of restoration budgets etc. Suffice to say, you can expect to see the movie in as clean a transfer as you ever will (if that makes any sense at all).

The film is presented in 235:1, I believe slightly down from the original 239:1 aspect ratio, but we won’t quibble. There are some truly breathtaking vistas on display, and Cimino knows it. His camera may not linger, drinking in those Montana ‘big skies’ in the way that perhaps Sergio Leone’s would, but the quality of the transfer and that all important 235:1 ratio provides plenty of delights nonetheless. Lighting is also fabulous on those shots, no doubt taking advantage of those magic early morning hours just after sunrise that always lends an incredibly attractive aura to landscapes and figures alike.

Audio is simple uncompressed linear PCM, and only a mono mix. Hey, what can you do, it was 1974. For what it’s worth, the sound canvas is clean and direct, and to my ears never harsh. During some of the high speed chase scenes with bullets flying etc, you might really yearn for modern audio separation, but alas no. At least the original sound mix appears to have been pretty well thought out back in the day.

So far, this Blu-Ray release has acquitted itself very well, but I have a little bad news for all you fans of supplementary material. There isn’t any.

Yes, remember my question earlier about whether Catherine Bach’s part had originally been bigger? Well, that question and all others remain a complete mystery, as there is not so much as a trailer on here (even my old DVD copy had the trailer).

This vanilla situation will be a crushing disappointment if (like me), you were really jonesing for some insight on the making of the movie. I had butterflies in my stomach contemplating an Eastwood/Bridges/Cimino commentary, or what about a full on Eastwood/Bridges/Kennedy/Lewis one? How amazing would that have been? Well, alas a bit too amazing. The disc is bereft of any bonus material at all, and the film therefore remains something of an enigma (unless you go read the Wiki page).

Cimino’s career is a masterclass in boom and bust, and the wonderful Thunderbolt & Lightfoot was where it all started.

The movie itself is still a great watch if you love 70s cinema, and here it’s looking as pretty as it’s ever gonna look.

Maybe one day we will get a version with the bonus material it most surely deserves, but that’s only an issue if it’s an issue (if you take my meaning). The film is what’s most important, and it’s in rude health.