Days of Thunder (1999, VHS)

Hollywood loves to ram its Star Vehicles into the concrete walls that bound our senses, repeatedly attempting to penetrate and violate the contents within. Hollywood also enjoys tapping into avenues that are increasing in popularity with the masses at the time, hoping to milk the fad for as much as possible. "Days Of Thunder" was a misguided attempt to capitalize on this shopworn strategy.

Tom Cruise, fresh from his successes in Top Gun and a couple prior, forgettable Star Vehicles, is the foundation for the chassis of this movie. He plays Cole Trickle, a driver plucked out of the tough World Of Outlaws sprint car division to run in the Top Gun of stock car classes - the Winston Cup division of NASCAR.

The plot is stale and predictable. To give the race summary, cocky upstart driver is paired with crusty old-school veteran crew-chief Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall). Both battle for control while chasing the same goal and eventually find respect for each other. Conflict with competitor driver Rowdy Burns (Mike Rooker) leads to a fateful crash that puts Trickle in a position to meet the standard Love Interest - Neurosurgeon Hercharacternameisnotworthyofremembrance, played by Nicole Kidman. Neurosurgeon falls for tough but tender driver. Trickle then makes buds with Burns. Finally (after what seems an eternity), Trickle makes it to the BIIIIIIIG RAAAAAAAACE in Daytona to face arch-rival Russ Wheeler who serves as a poor-man's Dale Earnhardt.

It's HOW this tepid plot unwinds that galls. "Days Of Thunder" is no more than a stripped-down and grounded version of "Top Gun". The characters, save Hogge, are plastic and one-dimensional. The race scenes in places looked authentic, yet also took many liberties. I guarantee that if two drivers played bumper tag like Trickle and Burns, NASCAR would string them up by the thumbs and bust them down to quarter-midget drivers. The other drivers then would render Trickle and Burns to the post-fight condition of Mike Tyson's early opponents. Duvall's Hogge character is the only relief in this film. Colonel Kilgore from "Apocalypse Now" it ain't, but his portrayal of Hogge (based on former car-owner Harry Hyde) is fairly realistic, carries some depth, and his inclination to talk to his machines is something that I have done occasionally with my little hotrod. Other than this bright spot, the film's predictability, reliance on cliches, and overall lack of respect for racing collectively give cause to blackflag this lapped car to the pits.

New viewers will look at Trickle and make an immediate association - Jeff Gordon (My definition of the anti-racer, much like Michael J. Fox is the anti-Elvis). This association in present tense can be construed as correct, yet when this movie was released, Gordon was tooling around the midwest in open-wheel sprint cars at local tracks and was hardly a household name. The uncanny part is that the Trickle character became a harbinger of the new wave of pretty-boy, personality-free, cliche-riddled racers that are now a staple in NASCAR and have rendered interviews to little more than commercials.

One note of credit goes out to Rick Hendrick, who owned many of the cars shown and all of the cars used in the movie. He provided somewhere in the order of 20 cars painted, driven, and/or sacrificed during filming. Even though most of the cars weren't in fighting trim, it nevertheless was a monumental effort to get them ready over and above the efforts of his REAL racing ventures. He got a gratuitous plug for his company, City Chevrolet, out of the movie as partial compensation.

I was at Daytona International Speedway when they filmed the in-car action shots. They took two of the Hendrick drones and put them on the track while an actual, live race was taking place. Of major anticipation was whether the considerably slower drones would somehow get in the way of the speeding pack of real racers. Fortunately the cars stayed not only out of the way, but THE HELL out of the way, and the race wasn't marred by an incident that would have had serious consequences. The cars look convincing enough in the movie, and I must admit the scenes turned out much better than I had imagined them, but it was obvious by side-to-side comparison that these were at best imitations of the real warriors.

Financially, despite the payroll of Mr. Cruise and company, the movie was largely successful. To the sport of racing, while it helped fuel the fervor for stock car racing, the fans it did attract were not so much racing fans as they were CRASH fans. The antics of Trickle, Burns, and Wheeler began being copied by half of the Saturday Night drivers in the country and it seemed a general relaxation of racing mores took over. Now it's OK to wreck your opponent and win. Even NASCAR has relaxed its standards. "Days Of Thunder" made race drivers - other then the Water-walking Cole Trickle - out to be little more than single-minded white-trash neanderthals with no vision of anything six inches past their nose. General concensus among the NASCAR players is that this film used racing more than it helped racing.

Tom Cruise got his Star Vehicle. Nicole Kidman got a household name and teamed up with Cruise in another sickening Star Vehicle, "Far And Away" as well as teamed up with Cruise down the matrtimonial aisle. Robert Duvall, well, I reckon he just got paid. This is one movie that should have never been allowed to be constructed, let alone taken out of the race shop and driven on the track. Two stars - one for making the field and one for Robert Duvall.

As for real racing, give me a good World Of Outlaws or American Speed Association event as the current NASCAR product bears the stench of this flick.

This review is part of a Sports Movie Writeoff - but not necessarily a FAVORITE movie. Read the reviews from the also-rans, er, other drivers in the field:

amylensor, awoolcott, bigjack, fm_hunter, foxfroggy, hhire, j3nny3lf, janesbit1, jennifer_gibbons, joubert, katetpz, kinganamort, kingjfs, roadiem, soxfan