[In Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, we] are treated to the usual fascist touches which first emerged in Dirty Harry, with nearly everyone being degraded for cheap laughs, women are really very simple objects to be endured and nearly everything made as nasty as possible.

The second part of the film turns to the staging of a similar robbery to that carried out a few years earlier by the same team. The preparations for the robbery are rather casually depicted and the robbery of the money from an armoured bank vault seems almost too good to be true, a couple of people tied up and the safe blasted open with small artillery…. Of course, it is not so much how they carry out the robbery that is of interest to the spectator but how they don't eventually get away with it.