Fed up with her boyfriend (Michael Madsen), live-wire Arkansas waitress Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon) persuades her friend Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis), a naive housewife burdened with a negligent, sexist husband (Christopher McDonald), to hit the road with her for a weekend of freedom. One of their first stops is a bar where the women relax, dance, and flirt with some of the locals. But the situation turns ugly when one man (Timothy Carhart) follows Thelma to the parking lot and attempts to rape her, causing Louise to shoot and accidentally kill him. Convinced that the police will never believe their version of the incident, the women take off, now fugitives from the law. Emboldened by recent events, Thelma picks up studly young cowboy J.D. (Brad Pitt) in Oklahoma and enjoys a one-night stand that leads to even more trouble. Director Ridley Scott's infamous feminist road movie ranks among the best films of the 1990s. Along with BLADE RUNNER and ALIEN, the film is one of Scott's finest works, largely because of Callie Khourie's vivid, brilliantly idiosyncratic script, wonderful performances from the two leads, and Adrian's Biddle's crisp photography of the American Southwest.
