Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974)

A car arrives at a remote church in rural Montana.  The driver steps out and enters the church.  Upon seeing the preacher (Clint Eastwood), the driver pulls out a gun and starts shooting.  The preacher ducks, dodges, and runs for his life across a field.  Meanwhile, Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) walks to a used car dealership and steals a white Pontiac Trans Am.  On the road, he almost runs over a preacher but swerves to instead hit a man with a gun.  The preacher climbs into the car and the pair speed away.  Over the next few days, they become friends.  The preacher admits to being Thunderbolt, a notorious bank robber.  The man who was trying to kill him had been in on the heist and believed he had been cheated.  The same was true for both Red Leary (George Kennedy) and Eddie Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), who have been pursuing the pair through Montana.  Eventually, Leary and Goody get the drop on Thunderbolt, but he explains that he did not cheat them.  With the money from their previous job gone, the four decide to pull a new job.

The first half of the movie is a series of random scenes that don't advance the plot.  It's a buddy road show that is regularly interrupted by a storm of bullets from the murderous Red.  Early in the movie, Lightfoot woos Catherine Bach - who would later gain fame as Daisy Duke on the Dukes of Hazzard - but she vanishes from the movie in the next scene.  Gary Busey has a brief bit as a sprinkler installer.  Only the main four actors have a role of any note, everyone else getting little more than cameo parts.  It is a random patchwork of a movie that often doesn't feel like it is going anywhere.  What was the point of catching a ride with the crazy man who had a racoon in the front seat and a score of rabbits in the trunk?  Why the woman standing naked in the window while Lightfoot is working on the yard?  How did Red keep finding them?  You would think he had a tracker on them, but this is 1973!

Jeff Bridges is quite good as a full of himself youth, often stealing scenes with his infectious charm.  He makes an excellent foil for Clint's seen-it-all veteran.  The antagonism between Bridges and George Kennedy is quite well-done.  Really, the chemistry among the principals is very good and is the strong point of the movie.

Overall, it is just okay.  

The Flight of the Phoenix (1965)

Pilot Frank Towns (James Stewart) and Navigator Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough) are bound for Benghazi with 13 passengers from a remote Libyan oil site.  Their plane is an old WWII cargo carrier that is held together by elbow grease and wishful thinking.  On this trip, the radio is out.  Though the weather report was favorable, they instead fly into a sandstorm.  Efforts to climb above it fail and soon the engines are dying.  Towns lands among the sand dunes of the Sahara and the cargo tumbles through the passenger cabin, killing 2 and seriously injuring 1.  A survey of the damage confirms that the plane will not be taking off again.  A hundred miles from the nearest water, they can only hope that a search party discovers them.  Of course, they are well off course, which means the search will likely be in the wrong place.

After several days, the survivors realize that they are not going to be found.  Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Kruger) proposes using the intact parts of the plane to construct a new plane.  Frank thinks this is madness but Lew is interested.  Dr. Renaud suggests that, even if the new plane won't fly, it's better to have hope than to sit around and watch one another die.

The story of Sgt. Watson (Ronald Fraser) is peculiar.  When Captain Harris (Peter Finch) is determined to march through the desert to the nearest water, Watson 'injures' his leg.  As such, another volunteers to go with Harris; that volunteer dies somewhere in the desert.  Harris managed to stumble back to the plane.  Not long after, Harris proposes to meet with a mysterious band of Arabs beyond a sand dune.  Watson flatly refuses to accompany the captain, threatening to use a revolver.  Harris marches off with someone else, resulting in more deaths.  Watson's repeated insubordination resulted in his surviving, while those who went with Captain Harris all died.  Here is a man who repeatedly shirked his duty, which proved the wise course.

It is a well-told story with excellent performances from a great cast, but it isn't all that entertaining.  It's okay.  I can definitely see why it was a box office failure, especially since it was released in the same month as Battle of the Bulge, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Doctor Zhivago, and Thunderball.

Charade (1963)

Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn) returns from her vacation to find her Paris apartment stripped bare and her husband missing.  She has hardly finished walking the empty rooms when a police inspector reveals that her husband is dead.  Though he reportedly earned $250,000 from selling the contents of the apartment, no money is found among his meager possessions.  Where is the money?

At her husband's funeral, three men arrive to view the body; none of them seem to mourn his passing.  Leopold sneezed on the corpse, Tex (James Coburn) held a mirror under his nose to test for breathing, and Herman (George Kennedy) stabbed his hand with a pin.  Soon after, each visits Regina and demands the money.  However, she has an ally.  While on vacation, she met Peter Joshua (Cary Grant) and he has arrived to offer condolences and otherwise assist her.  She is soon falling for him.  She is also contacted by Hamilton Bartholomew (Walter Matthau), a bureaucrat from the American Embassy with ties to the CIA.  He explains that her husband had stolen US money during WWII with 4 other men but then absconded with all the money.  He assures her that the money is still out there and she should find it before the others do.  If not, one of them is sure to do to her what happened to her husband.

Though directed by Stanley Donen, it has an Alfred Hitchcock vibe.  Throughout the movie, one is never sure whose side Cary Grant is on.  He has a variety of aliases and backstories that are highly suspect.  Still, he is ridiculously charming and Regina finds him irresistible.  There is a peculiar mix of humor and danger; at times, it feels like Grant is in a zany comedy while the rest of the cast are in a suspense-thriller.  Even so, it is quite entertaining and recommended.