Talk To The Trees: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

In 1974, Eastwood teamed with Jeff Bridges in the buddy action caper Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.

The idea to the film was originally devised by Stan Kamen of the William Morris Agency, but was written by Michael Cimino who had previously written for Magnum Force, the previous year and he would also direct the picture.

The film is a road movie about an ex Korean War veteran turned bank robber Thunderbolt (Eastwood) who teams with a young con man drifter, Lightfoot (Bridges) who try to stay ahead of the vengeful ex-members of his gang (George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis) in the search for a cash deposit abandoned from an old heist.

A young ne'er-do-well named Lightfoot steals a car. Independently, an assassin is preparing to kill a minister at his pulpit. The preacher escapes on foot after Lightfoot inadvertently rescues him by running over his pursuer.
The two men steal another car from a middle-aged couple at a gas station. Checking into a local hotel, Lightfoot picks up a couple of girls, one for each of them. Lightfoot learns that the minister is really a veteran bank robber known as Thunderbolt who was hiding with the guise of a clergyman following a successful looting of an armored car company.
Thunderbolt is the only member of the original gang who knows where the money is hidden. He and Lightfoot journey to Warsaw, Montana to retrieve the hidden loot from the old one-room schoolhouse where it was stashed. They discover a brand-new school in its place and conclude that the money must have been destroyed when the old school was demolished.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot unite forces with the men from the original gang, Eddie Goody and the menacing Red Leary. The mastermind of the old gang suffered a heart attack and died some years earlier, and Lightfoot inadvertently killed their electronics expert in his rescue of Thunderbolt. Lightfoot convinces the others to execute another heist -- robbing the same company with a variation of the original plan.
The team returns to Warsaw, taking jobs as cover to make money while they plan the heist. Thunderbolt works as a welder, Lightfoot with a plumbing crew (borrowing the company van to haul supplies for the heist), and Eddie works as an ice cream salesman in a small truck. Red forces Eddie to surveil escape routes and residential neighborhoods.
The robbery is a success, with Thunderbolt and Red managing the inside game, Eddie taking care of the getaway car, and Lightfoot dressing as a female to distract the only security guard and deactivate the ensuing alarm. Thunderbolt uses an Oerlikon 20 mm cannon to gain access to the inner safe and the team escapes with the loot.
The police are soon pursuing them. Red and Eddie hide in the trunk of the getaway car, and Eddie is shot by pursuing police. Red throws him out of the trunk, leaving him to die on a desolate dirt road. Red then enters the main compartment of the car, threatens Thunderbolt and Lightfoot with a pistol, and forces them to stop the car. Once Red has them out of the car, he pistol-whips them both, knocking them unconscious. He then proceeds to kick Lightfoot repeatedly, carrying through on his near-constant threats of violence towards the youngest member of the gang.
Red commandeers the getaway car and finds himself again pursued closely by police. The police shoot the car, striking Red several times. He continues racing through the streets until he encounters a roadblock. Red reverses course and loses control of the car, crashing into a store. Once outside of the car, he is attacked and killed by the store's watchdog.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot gradually recover from Red's beatings, continuing to escape on foot. The next day, they see a historical monument - a classic one-room schoolhouse from Warsaw, Montana, moved there by the state a couple of years before the second heist. Now a tourist attraction, the schoolhouse is exactly as it was when Thunderbolt hid the money there. Thunderbolt and Lightfoot retrieve the cash and leave after Lightfoot says his arm has become numb and has some trouble manhandling the blackboard hiding the money.
Thunderbolt buys an all-white Cadillac convertible, something Lightfoot said he wanted to do, and encounters Lightfoot hitch-hiking on the outskirts of town. They drive away and light cigars, celebrating the success of the job. Lightfoot is in obvious distress, however, dragging his left leg as well as gradually being unable to move his left arm and slurring his speech. Lightfoot soon succumbs to the injuries inflicted by Red, leaving Thunderbolt as the only surviving member of both robberies. Thunderbolt breaks his cigar, and drives down the highway with the deceased Lightfoot in the passenger seat.

Given that for Eastwood this was an offbeat film, Franks Wells of Warner Brothers refused to back Malpaso in the production, leaving him to turn to United Artists and producer Bob Daley.

Frank Stanley was brought in as photographer with Dee Barton scoring the film as he had previously done on many of Clint's films.

Although Eastwood generally refused to spend much time in scouting for locations, particularly unfamiliar ones, Cimino and Daley travelled extensively around the Big Sky Country in Montana for thousands of miles and eventually decided on the Great Falls area and to shoot the film in the towns of Ulm, Hobson, Fort Benont, August and Choteau and surrounding mountainous countryside.

Filming for Thunderbolt and Lightfoot was shot between July and September 1973 and unusually for an Eastwood film, Cimino took a high number of retakes of scenes to perfect it.

On release in spring 1974, the film was praised for its offbeat comedy mixed with high suspense and tragedy and Eastwood's acting performance was noted by critics to the extent that Clint himself believed it was Oscar worthy.

However, many critics widely believed that he was overshadowed by Jeff Bridges who stole the show in his performance as Lightfoot, and when he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Eastwood was reportedly fuming at his own lack of Academy Award recognition.

Despite critical acclaim, however, the film was only a modest success at the box office, earning $32.4 million.

Eastwood was unhappy with the way that United Artists had produced the film and swore "he would never work for United Artists again", and the scheduled two film deal between Malpaso and UA was cancelled.