Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7313 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-05-06
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Formats: PAL, Special Edition
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish, Turkish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 124 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Thelma and Louise is as extraordinary and admirable a film in retrospect as it was when it was first shown. Nothing has dated about its tale of two waitresses who decide that being outlaws and eventual death on their own terms is better than putting up with any more nonsense from husbands, boyfriends, rapists and offensive strangers.

Ridley Scott's direction is almost impeccable; Callie Khourie's script is intelligent, without being patronising, about the lives of blue-collar women; and the central performances from Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon are finely judged in the way they show hidden capacities in two ordinary people gradually opening up. The secondary performances are remarkable as well, most notably Harvey Keitel as the policeman with a heart who tries and fails to save them, and Brad Pitt as the beautiful boy whose casual thievishness dooms them even further.

On the DVD: Thelma and Louise comes to DVD in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 and with high quality Dolby 5.1 sound that brings out fine details of the Country score and the atmospheric noises of fast cars and lonely places. This special edition also comes with two commentaries, one in which Ridley Scott discusses his conception of the film in painstaking detail, and a delightful one in which Khourie, Davis and Sarandon charmingly bitch their way through the whole film. There is more of this in the excellent making-of documentary, "The Last Journey", which includes a subtly different alternate ending, as well as a comprehensive set of deleted scenes, notably a more tender alternate version of the Davis/Pitt love scene. --Roz Kaveney

DVD Description
DVD Special Features:

Audio Commentary with Director Ridley Scott
Audio Commentary with Geena Davies, Susan Sarandon and Writer Callie Khouri
The Last Journey Documentary
Deleted Scenes
Original Promotional EPK
Alternate ending
Alternate ending with Directors commentary
Over the edge - Multi Angle Storyboard Sequences
Storyboard Sequence-The Final Chase- Angle 1
Storyboard Sequence- The Final Chase - Angle 2
Home video preview
'Part of Me, Part of You' Music video
Theatrical Trailer & TV Spots
Thelma and Louise Photo Gallery
Language: English, Dolby Digital
Subtitles: English for hard of hearing, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Portuguese, Polish, Greek, Hungarian, Hebrew, Turkish, Czech, Croatian, Slovenian.

Synopsis
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.

Customer Reviews

The ultimate road movie
Thelma (Geena Davis) is naive and beautiful, trapped in her role as housewife to puerile, selfish Daryl. Louise (Susan Sarandon) is tough, a world-weary waitress. Thelma and Louise decide to take a short vacation together and, as events unfold, the girls lose any shreds of innocence they had previously and realise that they can never go home again. This is a tale of empowerment and liberation, while it is also tragic.

There is a feminist slant to the film; most of the men (including a gorgeous young Brad Pitt) are negative, emotionally and morally weak characters. The two main character's development is fascinating; Thelma loses her naivety and Louise learns to accept help. Thelma and Louise, despite their increasingly bad behaviour, remain strong, good characters, elicitng support and affection from the audience.

The film's ending is legendary. It immortalises these two characters and their plight, it is incredibly tragic and after watching this film for the first time, I cried for a good half an hour afterwards because it was just so sad. Yet there is also something positive and life-affirming in the women's retention of their freedom and cementing of their friendship.

Thelma and Louise is now a cult film. The acting is honest and impressive. The landscape is beautiful and the music enhances the film's atmosphere. The Oscar winning screenplay is incredible, and Ridley Scott's direction complements it perfectly. The DVD extras include audio commentaries by the director, writer and stars; the alternate endings provide a different perspective of the famous climax. There are a wealth of extras on this DVD, but they are by no means the selling point of the movie: it stands alone as a cult classic; "provocative, poignant and a triumph of moviemaking" could not be more true!

Action, adventure, drama and romance -- a total package
I saw this film for the first time today and I was blown away.

The basic plot is that two women decide to go for a weekend away. At the first stop they make, a man tries to rape one of them and is killed. They decide that the police won't believe their side of the story so they decide to make a run for it. As they do, they get deep into trouble but feel freer at the same.

The men are equally interesting. Keitel plays a policeman who suspects what may have happened but, due to their interstate run, has his hands tied by the FBI. Thelma's husband is just short of abusive but Louise's boyfriend is a kind-hearted person who has only just realised how much Louise really means to him.

Will Thelma and Louise make it out of the country? Will Louise and her beau get it together? Will Thelma find love herself?

What I loved about the film was the fact that the plot was character driven. We see how the two main characters change along the way and how they deal with the hand that they've been dealt.

The special features are good. The documentary is wonderful but is best watched after you see the film. The promotional video gives away too much of the plot. The Sarandon/Davis/Callie commentary sounds rather like a girly chat. The Ridley Scott commentary is informative but, to a certain extent, makes the viewer feel a bit like answers to questions asked at a job interview as he is very detailed about his CV and his thoughts/techniques (both in this film and in others).

In short -- it's a brilliant film which some good (and bad) extra features.

A cult classic -- not just for feminists.
"BOOM!!" Under fire from Thelma and Louise's guns, the tongue-wagging truck-driver's pride and joy (and extension of his manhood) goes up in flames. Incredulous, its owner stares at the spectacle and lets off a pitifully helpless and, in its helplessness, hilariously comical tirade against the two female outlaws; whose only reason not to shoot him, too, at this point is that it is so utterly more poignant to let him sit all alone by the road side in the vastness of the Southwest, robbed of all attributes of male potency and left to the pity of whoever is eventually going to pick him up and give him a ride back to civilization.

By the time of this incident, Thelma has mutated from a subdued and insecure housewife to a self-assured, fearless queen of the highway. ("Something has crossed over" in her, she tells Louise shortly before their final encounter with their truck-driving nemesis.) Louise in turn, who had taken the lead early on in their flight from the police, has overcome her intermittent bout of despair and is back to her old self, too. Now wanted not only for questioning in connection with the death of the rapist shot by Louise but also for armed robbery in another state, knowing that being questioned by the police will inevitably add a charge of murder for the incident which set off their run (and probably also knowing deep down inside that there is not going to be a happy ending to their weekend trip anyway), Thelma and Louise have stopped to care what is going to happen next. Thus emboldened, they make a last great run for it, which ultimately leads them to the vast, endlessly deep gorges of the Grand Canyon.

"Thelma and Louise" is all and none of the things as which it has been described. It is about the friendship between two women, about female independence and male sexism, but it is neither a simple "chick flick" nor a monument to feminism (although I have to admit that watching it can have an almost therapeutic effect when you've just about "had it" again with the male slightly-less-than-half of society). Most of the men that Thelma and Louise encounter are two-dimensional cartoon characters, but "Reservoir Dogs" and perpetual tough guys Harvey Keitel and Michael Madsen (of all people) are cast against stereotype. The movie also features some absolutely stunning pictures of the Southwestern scenery and mostly takes place on the road, but it is not just a "road movie" (feminist or otherwise). More than anything, this is a movie about the things that shape the way we are, and about the consequences of our actions. Had Thelma learned to use her brain before and not after their encounter with Harlan the rapist, she would have seen him for what he was and avoided him from the start. Had Louise not been raped herself, she would probably not have shot Harlan at being provoked by him, after the self-defense situation was already over. Impulse? Fate? Justifiable homicide? Hardly. Thoroughly understandable? Absolutely, at least from a woman's point of view.

It takes two extraordinary lead actresses to carry the movie's theme, and Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis are the perfect embodiment of the characters they portray. Next to them, not even Keitel and Madsen really shine (although this may be in part due to the thankless parts they play); only Brad Pitt, in the role that made him an overnight star, briefly gets to sparkle. Callie Khourie was a deserving winner of the 1991 Academy Award and Golden Globe for Best Original Screenplay, and both Sarandon and Davis would have been equally deserving of the Best Leading Actress awards. So would have Ridley Scott for Directing, Adrian Biddle for Cinematography, Thom Noble for Editing and the movie itself, for Best Drama - in a year that produced many extraordinary films, it might have been more just to split some of the awards among several contenders, and despite the strong competition ("Bugsy," "Silence of the Lambs," "Prince of Tides," "The Fisher King," "Grand Canyon" and "Fried Green Tomatoes," to name just a few), it seems sadly underrated for a movie that has long since become a cult classic to only have won one of the awards it was nominated for, both on Oscar Night and at the Golden Globes.