Thelma (Geena Davis) is a bored housewife. Louise (Susan Sarandon) is a waitress at a coffee shop. Together they sneak off in a '66 T-Bird convertible for a three-day fishing trip. However, an encounter with a drunken, would-be rapist and the stealing of their money by a handsome cowboy (Brad Pitt), they begin holding-up convenience stores, feeling strangely liberated by their new-found assertiveness. Harvey Keitel stars as the detective who attempts to talk the heroines into giving themselves up.
One of Scott’s key films, Thelma and Louise came at a point in Scott’s career when a big hit would probably have been quite welcome. By this point he had come off Some... more >
One of Scott’s key films, Thelma and Louise came at a point in Scott’s career when a big hit would probably have been quite welcome. By this point he had come off Someone to Watch Over Me and Black Rain, two urban dramas with the same sense of enclosure that play a part in Alien and Blade Runner. Thelma and Louise in a bright, outdoors movie - a road movie. Their great adventure begins very simply as fishing trip for a few days. However, an incident at a roadhouse sends the road trip down a different turn and soon the police are involved.
Featuring two knockout performances by Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon the film is maybe the Scott women’s film without equal. The film’s screenplay was written by Callie Khouri (about to have her first directorial feature released ) and Scott picked up on the potential for comedy. Until then, all his films had been marked by an intensity and seriousness. The film was hugely successful in the summer of 1991, and like Alien and Blade Runner, led to a run of similarly themed films. Maybe it led to the return in some small way of the women’s picture that had once been such a staple of Hollywood output. Part road movie, then, and part a contemporary all-girl spin on a kind of Tom Sawyer narrative the film has endured and for all its sweeping vistas and endless highways is distinct for Ridley Scott’s great facility with actors.
< less
