with Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, a film as interestingly idiosyncratic if not as controlled as Milius' Dillinger. The script, also by Cimino, is packed with excellent moments, but somehow the whole never amounts to more than the sum of its parts." Jay Cocks of Time magazine called the film "one of the most ebullient and eccentric diversions around." Leonard Maltin gave the film three out of four stars, describing it as "Colorful, tough melodrama-comedy with good characterizations; Lewis is particularly fine, but Bridges steals the picture." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on reviews from 32 critics. The website's consensus is "This likable buddy/road picture deftly mixes action and comedy, and features excellent work from stars Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges and first-time director Michael Cimino." Thunderbolt has since become a cult film. As a result of this film and Cimino's TV commercial work, producer Michael Deeley would approach Cimino to direct and co-write the Oscar-winning The Deer Hunter (1978). Jeff Bridges received the film's only nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Eastwood's acting performance was noted by critics to the extent that he himself believed it was Oscar-worthy. Analysis Author Michael Bliss wrote that while Thunderbolt may appear to be a conventional violent action film with Eastwood in the lead role, the film is more like "a meditation on, than a representation of, the male camaraderie theme" using rhetorical devices such as symbols, camerawork, and allusive dialogue to add to that theme. According to Bliss, the film's structural paradigm describes a tripartite series of events: natural order followed by disturbance followed by a restoration of natural order. See also List of American films of 1974 References Footnotes Bibliography Bach, Steven (September 1, 1999). Final Cut: Art, Money, and Ego in the Making of Heaven's Gate, the Film That Sank United Artists (Updated ed.). New York: Newmarket Press. . Bliss, Michael (1985). "Two For The Road". Martin Scorsese and Michael Cimino (Hardcover ed.). Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press. pp. 151–165. . Carducci, Mark Patrick (writer); Gallagher, John Andrew (editor) (1989). "Michael Cimino". Film Directors on Directing (Paperback ed.). Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers. . Deeley, Michael (April 7, 2009). Blade Runners, Deer Hunters, & Blowing the Bloody Doors Off: My Life in Cult Movies. New York: Pegasus Books LLC. . Eliot, Marc (October 6, 2009). American Rebel: The Life of Clint Eastwood (1st