Two friends, Thelma Dickinson (Geena Davis) and Louise Sawyer (Susan Sarandon), set out for a two-day vacation to take a break from their dreary lives. Thelma is married to a controlling man, Darryl (Christopher McDonald), while Louise works as a waitress in a diner, and is dating a musician who spends most of his time on the road. They head out in Louise's 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible.
They stop for a drink at a roadhouse where Thelma meets and dances with Harlan Puckett (Timothy Carhart). Thelma starts to feel sick, so Harlan takes her outside into the parking lot to get some fresh air. He starts kissing her and taking her clothes off. Thelma resists, but Harlan slaps her and begins to rape her. Louise finds them and threatens to shoot Harlan with a gun that Thelma brought with her. Harlan stops, but as the women walk away, he yells profanities and insults them. Louise responds by killing him. Thelma wants to go to the police, but Louise says that because Thelma was drunk and had been dancing with Harlan, no one would believe her claim of attempted rape. Afraid that she will be prosecuted, Louise decides to go on the run and Thelma accompanies her.
Louise is determined to travel from Oklahoma to Mexico, but refuses to go through Texas. Something happened to her in Texas years earlier, but she refuses to say exactly what. Heading west, they come across an attractive young man named J.D. (Brad Pitt), and Thelma convinces Louise to let him hitch a ride with them. Louise contacts her boyfriend Jimmy Lennox (Michael Madsen) 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 see her to deliver the money in person. Thelma invites J.D. into her room and learns he is a thief who has broken parole. They sleep together, and J.D. describes how he conducted his hold-ups. At the same time, Jimmy asks Louise to marry him, but she declines.
In the morning, Thelma tells Louise about her night with J.D. When they return to the motel room, they discover J.D. has stolen Louise's life savings and fled. Louise is distraught and frozen with indecision, so the guilty Thelma takes charge and robs a convenience store using the tactics she learned from listening to J.D. Meanwhile, the FBI are getting closer to catching the fugitives, after questioning J.D. and Jimmy, and tapping the phone line at Darryl's house. Arkansas State Police Investigator Hal Slocumb (Harvey Keitel) discovers that Louise had been raped years earlier in Texas. During a couple of brief phone conversations with her, he expresses sympathy for her predicament and pledges to protect her, but he is unsuccessful in his attempts to persuade her to surrender.
When they are pulled over by a New Mexico state trooper (Jason Beghe), Thelma holds him at gunpoint and locks him in the trunk of his car, while Louise takes his gun and ammunition. They then encounter a truck driver (Marco St. John) who repeatedly makes obscene gestures at them. They pull over and demand his apology, but when he refuses, they fire at the fuel tanker he is driving, causing it to explode. Leaving the man furious (and stealing his hat), they drive off.
Thelma and Louise are finally cornered by the authorities only one hundred yards (91 m) 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 themselves. Rather than be captured and spend the rest of their lives in jail, Thelma proposes that they "keep going" (over the cliff). Louise asks Thelma if she is certain, and Thelma says yes. They kiss, Louise steps on the accelerator, and they ride the car over the cliff to their presumed deaths.
Output: How long was the vacation Thelma and Louise took supposed to last?