Pop feminism proved a potent box office draw with this stylish, star-studded outlaw road trip from Ridley Scott; a big convertible has never looked better on the beautiful highways of the West. Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon are escapees from male oppression that find themselves a latter-day Bonnie & ‘Claudine.’ The resolution of their dilemma will spur discussion and perhaps a little dissent, which what made it an important picture for its year. With new extras but also director Scott’s earlier explanation of the original ending.

Thelma & Louise 4K
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 1180
1991 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 130 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date May 30, 2023 / 39.95
Starring: Susan Sarandon, Geena Davis, Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Stephen Tobolowsky, Brad Pitt, Ken Swofford.
Cinematography: Adrian Biddle
Production Designer: Norris Spencer
Art Director: Lisa Dean
Film Editor: Thom Noble
Costume Design: Elizabeth McBride
Original Music: Hans Zimmer
Screenplay by Callie Khouri
Produced by Mimi Polk, Ridley Scott
Directed by Ridley Scott

A really great-looking Ridley Scott film has arrived in 4K — that’s all most home theater fans need to hear.

The times they appear to be a-changing … at least in the present moment women filmmakers seem to be getting a firm grip on the Hollywood establishment. That’s just an observation from looking at film, TV and streaming credits, not inside knowledge. Thirty-two years ago it was a different story. The Biz wasn’t quite the Closed Shop it had been for 50 years, but it was still much tougher for woman to get ahead than men. It was already bad enough for men who had no relatives already working in the business.

A few early incursions into the male-dominated film production made news, and a big splash was this 1991 effort that wore its liberated attitude on its sleeve. A big action picture with a solitary writing credit for a (gasp) woman writer caught the attention of news editors everywhere, what with outspoken Susan Sarandon and feisty newcomer Geena Davis in the mix. The brilliant story hook was a girl-girl inversion of the male buddy picture, a formula then beaten to death from over twenty years of overexposure. T&L (nobody had the guts to name the leads ‘Thelma and Annie’) was from MGM, which the next year or so put out Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, the sorriest excuse ever for a male buddy picture. Thelma & Louise caught the culture wave at just the right time — several big magazines covered it as the future of gender equity in American film entertainment.

 

Director Ridley Scott keeps the kettle boiling and the visuals popping — this is a great-looking road picture. Attractive visuals have made plenty of Scott’s films watchable, as with the vague and muted Blade Runner. Here he has two fun, assertive women in front of his Panavision lens, along with and half a movie’s worth of choice Southwestern landscapes.

Neither waitress Louise (Sarandon) nor housewife Thelma (Davis) is particularly happy. Louise is stuck with a balky boyfriend and Thelma is married to a first class jerk, Darryl (Christopher McDonald). Louise suggests they unwind for a weekend at a friend’s mountain cabin and Thelma says yes; Thelma doesn’t bother to ask the abusive Darryl for permission to go. They stop at a country bar, where Thelma feels so carefree that she lets hustling goon Harland Puckett (Timothy Carhart) get her drunk. When he tries to rape her in the parking lot, Louise intervenes with a pistol. She then kills him, out of pure principle. Terrified and disoriented, the two women run away.

Louise decides to go to Mexico until the problem blows over and asks her boyfriend Jimmy (Michael Madsen) to send her money in Oklahoma City. Jimmy comes as well thinking that their relationship is in trouble, but Louise doesn’t want to make him an accessory to her crime. Unfortunately, Thelma spends the night with a randy hitchiker named J.D. (Brad Pitt, in a star-making role), who steals Louise’s cash. Trying to atone, Thelma robs a store. The women are now treated as armed and dangerous public enemies. With Arkansas detective Hal (Harvey Keitel) and the FBI on the case, their chances of reaching Mexico aren’t very good.

 

Never underestimate the cluelessness of Pop criticism: gee, do you think it’s really proper for women to be involved in a shoot ’em up movie?  Is it a betrayal of feminism, or perhaps too radically feminist?  The ‘safe’ controversy was pretty much baloney, as the movie just does a gender swap on what movies had been doing with men for decades — making films that intersperse humor and drama with wild chases and shootouts. The movie’s violence made entertainment news, even though it seemed tame compared to the stratospheric body counts in male action films of the day.

The film is a good example of a subgenre formerly considered low-grade exploitation — the sordid rural crime spree — now being groomed as quality filmmaking: Jackson County Jail or Big Bad Mama but with Oscar-caliber talent. Correspondent Wade Sowers wrote in 2001 that Thelma & Louise appeared to lift entire scenes and characters from Michael Pressman’s The Great Texas Dynamite Chase (1976), released by Corman’s New World Pictures.

“I got a knack for this shit!”

Callie Khouri’s engaging script and Ridley Scott’s production polish elevate the show far above exploitation standards, lending gravity to the heroines’ plight. Thelma is clearly liberated by danger (that’s her quote just above) and both women tear up the sagebrush in the name of femme dignity. The movie even concocts a huge fireball explosion for its trailer, as if Roger Corman were in charge. Some of the audience reactions were the same as with Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Louise’s impulse murder is a “Why not?” reflex, and the girls’ enraptured buddy-buddy embrace of their final “Let’s Go!” gesture is an expression of existential defiance: I am Woman, See Me Soar. Their suicidal rapture makes them the patron saints of urban police chase perpetrators everywhere. Had the Thelma & Louise idea caught on, we might have seen the beginning of a new subgenre, called Femmesploitation.

 

Some male critics were not happy, a reaction to the fact that the movie wags the stereotype stick directly at men. Although Khouri and the stars deny any such notion, the movie is about difficult men, with ‘difficult’ spelled P – I – G. Thelma’s Darryl is an infantile bully and an embarrassing clown. Jimmy is a good enough egg, but he doesn’t really value Louise until it looks as if she’s leaving him. The rapist and other jerks they encounter are macho scum, common in the wild or on the road.

If Jimmy and the ‘good cop’ Hal are taken as decent guys, it’s only because they’re ashamed of their porcine heritage. An unspoken but strongly felt idea is that Thelma and Louise would do very well as a same-sex couple, if society would permit — and if they could have male company on their terms. Men in general are depressing disappointments.

Don’t say it out loud: Reverse Sexism.

We’re told that Thelma & Louise helped popularize the line dancing craze. Apparently, no permanent association was made between ‘line dance’ and ‘rape in the parking lot.’ I think the film also marks the advent of the obsession with washboard abs. Another gender reversal is Brad Pitt’s hitchiking heartbreaker J.D., who corresponds to the irresisible ‘pretty young thing’ of male fantasies. He’s the personification of William Holden in Picnic, who brags that two ‘Hollywood Babes’ in a convertible picked him up on the interstate by shouting, “Hey beefcake!”  Tennessee Williams seems to have defined macho appeal using the same guidelines. Brad Pitt, the dog, apparently ignites a wide variety of female fantasies. His instant popularity after this movie validated his appeal to women.

Reaching beyond washboard abs, Thelma & Louise marks a watershed year: around 1990 is when the basic sex fantasy of mainstream American films switched from the male POV to the female POV. It’s Pitt’s torso and unbuttoned Levis that tease Davis, not the other way around. From this point forward, more women keep their tops on and more men take their pants off (except in streaming television). In period films, it’s male hunks like Pitt that sport anachronistic, fashion-conscious hairstyles.

 

Callie Khouri’s snappy, often excellent girl-girl dialogue and the acting of Sarandon and Davis overcome some character inconsistencies. Thelma in particular alternates between hausfrau bozo helplessness and Che Guevara True Grit. A former child bride, Thelma intially seems brainwashed into serving her insufferable hubbie. Just half an hour into a road trip, she’s running wild and apparently oblivious to the come-on signals she’s sending to a drunken goon. For the story’s jeopardy to snowball so quickly, somebody has to make a lot of stupid mistakes, and Thelma is the one tapped by the Dumb Bunny Stick.

She even whimpers and whines like a dog in heat.

These Girls On The Lam behave almost as foolishly as did the noir loser Al Roberts, of the classic Detour. Just like Roberts, Thelma chooses a stupid moment to pick up a perfect stranger. Fewer than 24 hours after a traumatic rape attempt, she’s hot to trot with Brad Pitt’s J.D., happily pantomiming the image of a crude stereotype, for a good laugh. Thelma makes most of the big mistakes, such as losing Louise’s $6 thousand dollars of getaway cash. But Louise takes the prize as facilitator extraordinaire, leaving the functional dimwit Thelma alone with dangerous men and (begging credibility) trusting her with the money. It’s only that Geena Davis is such a good actress that we stay engaged when her Thelma morphs into Patty Hearst, robbing with abandon. With these characters, nobody is going to accuse Thelma & Louise of being a feminist tract.

More inconsistency threatens when Thelma gravely announces that “something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back.” We’re to understand that The Dumb Bunny is now an outlaw prophet — sex and imminent death have made her a fully realized woman. The notion works well enough in context. Writer Khouri makes sure that these character shifts are given further complications. Unbalanced by the post-rape panic and indecision, Louise’s mental confusion is partly explained by an incident in her past.

 

None dare call them Beavers. News at Eleven.

If the movie cheats, it’s that it tars most men as unredeemable. The rapist Harlan all but makes it impossible for Louise not to shoot him — he refuses to apologize and doubles down on obscene macho insults. Nobody cares if he’s drunk or out of control: he’s scum and he deserves to die. The girls make a more gratuitous demand for dignity when they confront a troglodyte truck driver, who by this film’s logic also deserves to die. They instead indulge a spectacular castration fantasy by blowing up his truck, a blasteroonie that should be summoning lawmen from Alaska to Florida. Thelma snatches the trucker’s cap from the dirt, like a trophy phallus.

This liberation idea goes too far when the women ‘tenderly’ force a polite cop into the trunk of his crusier at gunpoint. The filmmakers cannot resist making the policeman whimper like a crybaby, which seems unnecessary. Khouri, or Scott humiliates this nice guy further when the Rasta dude on the mountain bike blows dope smoke into the trunk. That kind of ‘Razz the Pig’ humor went out with Blacksploitation comeuppance fantasies like Cotton Comes to Harlem.

Ridley Scott’s show is an attractive return to the heyday of Road Movies. The subgenre never went away, but it hadn’t been this evocative since the ’70s. A master at capturing Just-Right images, Scott pulls off technically adept trucking shots — that convertible Thunderbird looks fantastic rolling down red rock highways, or cuting through oil fields and cropland. A single shot ties the laughing, singing women with a cropdusting plane. Thelma & Louise has some beautiful open road vistas at all hours of the day and night, converging in a ‘land rush” chase remniscent of Spielberg’s Road Movie, The Sugarland Express. We never have time to ask ourselves why this easily-spotted car on the highway isn’t pegged and rounded up within a few hours.

 

In the extras, Khouri, Scott and the actresses debate the meaning and appeal of the violent ending. They theorize every possibility for the ‘rightness’ of the finish except the most obvious one. (spoiler) Preview audiences reportedly didn’t like the image of the toy-like Thunderbird plummeting thousands of feet into the abyss of the Grand Canyon. Scott opted for the visual ‘fix’ that had saved one of the first and most iconic modern male buddy pictures, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That 1969 western freeze-frames on its heroes an instant before 200 riflemen blast them to smithereens. I was there with a large audience and can tell you that they let out a collective sigh at being spared a Bonnie & Clyde bloodbath. The matinee beauty of Paul Newman and Robert Redford would not be spoiled.

The freeze frame and fade to white at the end of Thelma & Louise works in exactly the same way: the freedom-loving ladies are frozen like legends, or a stellar constellation. That’s certainly more upbeat than a realistic Death Plunge to Doom (squirshed, I’d say: not pretty in the slightest). The movie then reprises the noble ladies’ shining faces from earlier in the picture, mythomania ploy from The Wild Bunch. The curtain falls on a fun thriller instead of a Deep Deep Downer. Leaving the audience smiling earned the movie excellent word of mouth.

 

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After numerous Blu-ray editions from MGM and other labels, The Criterion Collection’s 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray of Thelma & Louise takes this well-known winner to a new level of validation. Director Ridley Scott signed off on the new 4K digital restoration, which to these eyes feels a little on the ‘cool’ side. The 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack ought to please high-end video fans. We like the new cover art by Sam Hadley, too.

The package includes one 4K UHD disc in Dolby Vision HDR, and two Blu-rays with the film and special features. Some of the extras are existing items produced in 1996 and 2001, previously reviewed on a 2011 MGM release. The director and both stars are invested in those. Other older items include a comprehensive making-of piece with input from several more actors. It’s good to see the interesting Callie Khouri talk about winning her Oscar for best screenplay. Ridley Scott and Ms. Callie Khouri also return for new Criterion interviews.

The gallery of deleted scenes all look like candidates for the trim bin, even though their absence hacks down the contributions of Michael Madsen, Brad Pitt and Harvey Keitel, who must have been surprised to see half his performance gone. Yet the movie as edited by Thom Noble remains focused where it should be, on our isolated heroines.

Of special interest is the uncut extended ending with the director’s comments. It’s a spectacular shot, and worth a debate about other possible ways to edit the finale. The entertaining Thelma & Louise will likely be remembered as a signal film for the early 1990s. It’s certainly a valid turnabout on the male buddy action picture.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

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Thelma & Louise
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent
Supplements:
New interviews with Scott and Khouri
Audio commentary with Ridley Scott,
Audio commentary with Callie Khouri, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon
2001 documentary featuring Davis, Khouri, Sarandon, Scott, Michael Madsen, Christopher McDonald, Brad Pitt and others
Scott’s first short film Boy and Bicycle (1965) + one of his early commercials, Ploughman (1977)
Original theatrical featurette
Ten deleted and extended scenes, including an extended ending with director’s commentary, and Storyboards
Music video for Glenn Frey’s song Part of Me, Part of You
Trailers, publicity materials
Insert booklet with essays by Jessica Kiang, Rachel Syme and Rebecca Traister.
Packaging: One Blu-ray in Keep case
Reviewed: June 21, 2023
(6947thel)

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