Thelma & Louise

Thelma & Louise is a 1991 American female buddy road film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Callie Khouri. It stars Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise, two friends who embark on a road trip which ends up in unforeseen circumstances. The supporting cast include Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, and Brad Pitt in his first major film role.

Despite some controversy at the time of its release, the film became a critical and commercial success, receiving six Academy Award nominations and winning for Best Original Screenplay. Scott was nominated for Best Director, and both Sarandon and Davis were nominated for Best Actress. To date, this is the most recent film to have two actors nominated in the same category for either Best Actor or Best Actress. At the intersection of several genres, it is now considered a classic. It influenced other films and artistic works and became a landmark of feminist film. In 2016, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Plot
Best friends Thelma Dickinson and Louise Sawyer 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 man, Darryl, while sharp-tongued Louise works as a waitress in a diner and is on–off dating an easygoing musician, Jimmy, 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. 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 look 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., 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, 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. The pair are later 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.

Cast

 * 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)

Production
Thelma & Louise was originally planned to star Meryl Streep and Cher, who had co-starred together in the 1983 film Silkwood. Streep turned the option down in favor of taking lighter, more comedic roles at the time, while Cher declined to focus on her music career.

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 actually filmed just south of Dead Horse Point State Park in Utah. 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.

Release
The film was screened out of competition at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival.

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

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."

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

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

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

Metacritic lists a composite critical score of 88 out of 100 based on 12 reviews, meaning "universal acclaim." Rotten Tomatoes records a score of 84%, and an average rating of 7.9/10, based on 67 reviews.

Feminism
Numerous critics and writers have remarked on the strong feminist overtones of Thelma & Louise. Film critic B. Ruby Rich praises the film as an uncompromising validation of women's experiences, while Kenneth Turan calls it a "neo-feminist road movie". In her essay "The Daughters of Thelma and Louise", Jessica Enevold argues that the film constitutes "an attack on conventional patterns of chauvinist male behavior toward females". In addition, it "exposes the traditional stereotyping of male–female relationships" while rescripting the typical gender roles of the road movie genre.

In her review for the Los Angeles Times, film critic Sheila Benson objects to the characterization of the film as feminist, arguing that it is more preoccupied with revenge and violence than feminist values.

In his review for the New York Post, film critic Kyle Smith describes the film as "a misogynist tale about unbelievably ditzy women who lose what remains of their reason under pressure and suffer the ultimate punishment." Smith's review focused less on the fact that the film stars female characters and instead points out the terrible decisions these female characters make throughout the entire film.

In an article commemorating the film's 20th anniversary in 2011, Raina Lipsitz called it "the last great film about women" and said that it heralded the achievements of women that caused 1992 to become "the year of the woman". However, she also said that women-themed films have since been losing ground.

Accolades
The British Film Institute published a book about the film in 2000 as part of a Modern Classics series. On the Writers Guild of America Award's list of 101 best screenplays, it made No.72.

Soundtrack
Pete Haycock on slide guitar contributed to Thunderbird, the theme music for the film. 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.