Thelma & Louise

Best friends Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) set out for a weekend vacation at a fishing cabin in the mountains to take a break from their dreary lives in Arkansas. Thelma, a ditzy housewife, is married to a disrespectful and controlling carpet salesman, Darryl (Christopher McDonald), while sharp-tongued Louise works as a waitress in a diner and is on–off dating an easygoing musician, Jimmy (Michael Madsen), who spends most of his time on the road.

On the way, they stop for a drink at a roadhouse bar, where Thelma meets and dances with a flirtatious stranger, Harlan (Timothy Carhart). When he takes her outside to the parking lot to get some fresh air, he starts kissing her and taking her clothes off without her consent. Thelma resists, but Harlan becomes violent and then attempts to rape her. Louise finds them and threatens to shoot Harlan with the gun that Thelma brought with her. Harlan stops, but, as the women walk away, he yells that he should have raped her, telling them "I should have gone ahead and fucked her", before insulting Louise when she turns around. In a fit of rage, Louise responds by shooting Harlan in the chest, killing him instantly. A horrified Thelma ushers Louise to the car and the pair flee the scene.

At a motel, they discuss how to handle the situation. Thelma wants to go to the police, but Louise fears that no one will believe Thelma's claim of attempted rape since Thelma was drinking and dancing with Harlan, and they will be subsequently charged for murder. They decide to go on the run, but Louise insists that they travel from Oklahoma to Mexico without going through Texas. Something happened to Louise in Texas several years earlier, and Thelma suspects it was something similar to what had happened with Harlan but Louise vehemently says she will not talk about it. Heading west, the women come across an attractive young drifter, J.D. (Brad Pitt), who Thelma quickly falls for, and Thelma convinces Louise to let him hitch a ride with them. Louise contacts Jimmy and asks him to wire transfer her life savings to her. When she goes to pick up the money, she finds that Jimmy has come to deliver the money in person, and the two spend the night together. Jimmy proposes to Louise, but she refuses. Meanwhile, Thelma invites J.D. to her room, and they sleep together. She then learns he is a thief who has broken parole.

The following morning, Thelma leaves J.D. in her motel room to meet Louise downstairs for breakfast, and, when they return, they discover J.D. has stolen Louise's life savings and fled. Louise is distraught, so a guilty Thelma takes charge and later robs a nearby convenience store using tactics she learned from listening to J.D. Meanwhile, the FBI is getting closer to catching the fugitives after witnesses at the bar saw Louise's 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible speeding out of the parking lot the night of the shooting. Their whereabouts are also questioned by the owner of the fishing cabin after the women failed to arrive for the weekend. Arkansas State Police Investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel), leading the investigation, questions both J.D., who was caught, and Jimmy and taps into the phone line at Darryl's house. He discovers that Louise had been raped years earlier in Texas, so he sympathizes with her situation and understands why they didn't report Harlan's murder to the authorities. During a couple of brief phone conversations with Louise, he expresses his sympathy but is unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade her to surrender.

Thelma tells Louise she understands if she wants to go back home, knowing she has Jimmy waiting for her, but explains she cannot go back to Darryl. Louise promises they will keep going together. While back on the road, Thelma reflects on what Harlan had done with her and tries to ask Louise if what happened with her also happened to Louise in Texas. Louise angrily says she is not talking about it and tells Thelma to never bring it up again. Later, they are pulled over by a New Mexico state trooper for speeding. Knowing he will soon discover they are wanted for murder and armed robbery, Thelma holds him at gunpoint and locks him in the trunk of his police car, while Louise takes his gun and ammunition. They drive away from the scene and spend the next few nights heading further west. On the road, they encounter a foul-mouthed truck driver who repeatedly makes obscene gestures at them. They pull over and demand an apology from him; when he refuses, they fire at the fuel tanker he was driving, causing it to explode. The women leave him stranded in the desert with the tanker's wreckage.

Thelma and Louise are finally cornered by the authorities only one hundred yards from the edge of the Grand Canyon. Hal arrives on the scene, but he is refused the chance to make one last attempt to talk the women into surrendering. Rather than be captured and spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma proposes that they "keep going". Louise asks Thelma if she is certain, and Thelma says yes. They kiss, Louise steps on the gas, and they accelerate over the cliff as Hal desperately pursues them on foot.

• Susan Sarandon as Louise Elizabeth Sawyer
• Geena Davis as Thelma Yvonne Dickinson
• Harvey Keitel as Detective Hal Slocumb
• Michael Madsen as Jimmy Lennox
• Christopher McDonald as Darryl Dickinson
• Stephen Tobolowsky as Max
• Brad Pitt as J.D.
• Timothy Carhart as Harlan Puckett
• Jason Beghe as State Trooper
• Marco St. John as Truck Driver (uncredited)

Michelle Pfeiffer and Jodie Foster were originally chosen for the leads and accepted the roles, but preproduction took too long, and they had to drop out due to other commitments. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0103074/trivia

Although the setting for the film is a fictional route between Arkansas and the Grand Canyon, it was filmed almost entirely in the states of California and Utah. The primary filming locations were rural areas around Bakersfield, California and Moab, Utah. The Grand Canyon scenes were filmed just south of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah.[2] Parts of the film were also shot at Shafer Overlook, Monument Valley, La Sal Mountains, La Sal Junction, Cisco, Old Valley City Reservoir, Thompson Springs, Arches National Park, and Crescent Junction in Utah.[3]

The film was screened out of competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.[4]

Reception

Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis both received various accolades for their performances, including nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The film received critical acclaim. Janet Maslin of The New York Times had only praise for the film in her review:

Mr. Scott's Thelma and Louise, with a sparkling screenplay by the first-time writer Callie Khouri, is a surprise on this and many other scores. It reveals the previously untapped talent of Mr. Scott (best known for majestically moody action films like Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain) for exuberant comedy, and for vibrant American imagery, notwithstanding his English roots. It reimagines the buddy film with such freshness and vigor that the genre seems positively new. It discovers unexpected resources in both its stars, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, who are perfectly teamed as the spirited and original title characters.[5]

Roger Ebert also praised the film but withheld a perfect score on the basis of "the last shot before the titles begin. It's a freeze frame that fades to white, which is fine, except it does so with unseemly haste .... It's unsettling to get involved in a movie that takes 128 minutes to bring you to a payoff that the filmmakers seem to fear."[6]

After watching the film, singer-songwriter Tori Amos wrote "Me and a Gun", the story of her rape several years earlier.[7][8]

The final scene, where the two embrace before committing suicide by driving off a cliff, has become iconic.[9] Numerous homages and parodies of the scene have appeared, including alternate film endings, cartoon parodies,[10] video game "Easter eggs",[11] and as a tragic ending to television series, music videos,[12] and commercials.[13][14]

The film also received harsh criticism from those who thought it was biased against men and that its depictions of men were unfairly negative.[15][16]

Metacritic lists a composite critical score of 88 out of 100 based on 12 reviews, meaning "universal acclaim."[17] Rotten Tomatoes records a score of 84%, and an average rating of 7.9/10, based on 67 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Simultaneously funny, heartbreaking, and peppered with action, Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise is a potent, well-acted road movie that transcends the feminist message at its core."[18]

"Thelma & Louise" placed second to The Silence of the Lambs (film) as the best film of 1991 in a poll of 81 critics.[19]

Pete Haycock on slide guitar contributed to Thunderbird, the theme music for the film.[28] In addition to Glenn Frey's "Part of Me, Part of You", which became the film's primary theme song, the soundtrack included songs performed by Chris Whitley, Martha Reeves, Toni Childs, Marianne Faithfull, Charlie Sexton, Grayson Hugh, B.B. King, and Michael McDonald.

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• Official website
• Thelma & Louise on IMDb
• Thelma & Louise at AllMovie
• Thelma & Louise at the TCM Movie Database
• Thelma & Louise at Rotten Tomatoes
• Thelma & Louise at Box Office Mojo
• Thelma & Louise at The Numbers
• Original trailer for Thelma & Louise on YouTube