Days of Thunder (1990)

Days of Thunder (1990) – A hotshot young driver from California arrives in the heart of NASCAR country to drive stock cars. With the help of a veteran crew chief and a beautiful doctor, he will conquer some personal demons, and how to race to victory.

Directed by Tony Scott                                   Starring Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman

Why I Liked It – Some fun melodrama centered on car racing.

Let’s get this out of the way first – this movie desperately, DESPERATELY, wants to be “Top Gun”.  It wants to be that Tom Cruise hit so badly it is painful to watch.  From Cruise’s bad boy character arriving on a motorcycle, to his issues with his father being soothed by a tough older man in his life, to his unlikely romance with a beautiful intelligent woman, to the shot selection and style of shots, to the soundtrack, this movie is a fawning fanboy of a movie.  Add in a script that is dismissive of stock car culture and the folks who live there and the movie is bound to struggle.  Written by a California boy (Robert Townes), all the southern folks in the movie can be divided into two categories – well-meaning but essentially dopey goobers, and small-minded parochialists who are trying to do our hero wrong.  I’d have to go back and watch, but my impression is that the only way the good ole boys can beat Cruise’s character is when they nefariously wreck him.  The script has no real feel for the skill and bravery it takes to run a stock car in a race.

Which is too bad, because a halfway decent movie gets lost in the middle of it all.

The reality is that the story outline of “Top Gun” isn’t a bad one.  An outsider comes into a closed community, doesn’t pay “proper” respect to the cultural norms, and is shunned.  Passing through the gauntlet of challenge and disaster, our hero is purified and emerges more complete at the other end.  My complaint (?) is that it was done SO much better by Pixar’s 2006 animated movie “Cars”.  Cruise is fine, the relationship with Duvall is fun, Kidman makes her major motion picture debut in “stand next to the male star and look pretty kind of role”, and Tony Scott nails the look of the movie.

It’s not one of the great auto racing movies IMO, but you won’t regret investing the time to watch.

Rating -*** Worth A Look