Product Description

Cole Trickle enters the high-pressure world of Nascar racing. He's a hot driver with a hot temper, and this attitude gets him into trouble not only with other drivers, but members of his own team as well.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5313 in DVD
• Brand: Team Marketing
• Released on: 1999-05-25
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .0" h x .0" w x .0" l, 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

Features

• Officially Licensed
• Highest Quality Recording

Amazon.com essential video
With Days of Thunder, director Tony Scott tried to do for the Indy 500 what he did for the U.S. Air Force with Top Gun. But without Top Gun's go-go soundtrack and visual feats, Scott merely ends up with a Tom Cruise vehicle that's out of gas.

Cruise plays (what else?) a cocky, upstart stock-car racer who faces down ruthless racing opponents. Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Cary Elwes, and Randy Quaid do the laps around this movie's tiresome track with Cruise, while director Scott attempts to propel the action along with his trademark visceral, gritty but glamorous visual style.

Days of Thunder is notable, however, as a turning point in Cruise's then one-dimensional career. After this film--having tired even his most devoted fans by playing a bartender, an air force pilot, and a stock-car driver--Cruise was forced to take on real character parts. --Ethan Brown

From The New Yorker
This new Tom Cruise vehicle, directed by Tony Scott, is the latest example of the nearly demagogic brand of pop-culture uplift practiced by the producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. (They were also responsible for "Flashdance" and "Top Gun.") It's about winning, and nothing else. The setting this time is the stock-car racing circuit. The screenwriter, Robert Towne, seems to be trying to underplay the rah-rah elements of the material-to give competition some point other than pure ego gratification. And he supplies some nice dialogue: easy, natural-sounding macho banter among the drivers and their crews. But the movie has been stripped for speed: by the big race (the Daytona 500), all the ambiguities in the script have been removed, and there's nothing to interfere with Cruise's, and the producers', streak to the finish line. Like the previous Simpson-Bruckheimer pictures, it's designed-engineered, really-to give audiences an overdose of the thrill of victory; it wants us to jump out of our seats, pumping our fists in the air and roaring for the hero to pulverize his opponents. The racing sequences are very ordinary. Also with Robert Duvall, who gives a lively performance as the hero's mentor, and Michael Rooker, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, and Cary Elwes.-T.R. (7/16/90) -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

A movie filled with nothing but left turns
I've lived in the south since I was 9 years old and noticed immediately upon moving here that the locals have a fanatical love of NASCAR. I never really did connect with the sport though. But this is the south, and most folks here make it a point to watch NASCAR often. I remember watching Days of Thunder when it first came out on VHS and remember thinking that it was impressive on a Surround Sound setup, but I honestly didn't remember that much else about it, and that's largely because there's not much to it.

The movie, in a nutshell, chronicles the rise of up and coming rookie driver Cole Trickle, played by Tom Cruise. Cole just got bumped from his previous racing job due to some fiasco involving his father, and wants to eventually work his way up to Indy racing, and uses stock car racing as the best path to that goal. He enlists the help of Robert Duvall, a legendary crew chief who recently retired, to garner enough wins to proceed with his ultimate plans. The movie is something of a retread (pun intended) of Top Gun, as others have noted, in that the main character is a cocky, headstrong pilot of a vehicle who has a rivalry with a fellow pilot/driver (Michael Rooker in this case, Iceman in "Top Gun"), suffers an accident (a big crash in this film, F-14 crash in "Top Gun"), goes through a long period of doubt, but comes out on top in the end. And that's before you even get to the Kelly McGillis/Nicole Kidman parallels. Essentially this is a very formulaic movie plot in which the names and vehicles are changed around a bit but not much else. Thankfully they omitted the obligatory beach volleyball scene with Cole Trickle spiking Russ Wheeler in his big smug face.

The acting is pretty ho-hum. Cruise plays a straight out of the archtype handbook rendition of the youthful, brash, hot shot while Duvall covers the older, more sagely guiding force. I really like Robert Duvall and I think he stood head and shoulders above the others acting-wise. He brings a great deal of realism to the characters he portrays on screen and he nails this part perfectly to the point where you'd swear his character actually did build stock cars and manage pit crews for a living.

One of the most annoying aspects of the film are the names it gives to various drivers..."Cole Trickle", "Russ Wheeler", and "Rowdy Burns", as prime examples. You can almost see the producers sitting around a conference table and trying to decide on a name that encompassed the evocative image of the typical Southern standout racecar driver. One can easily think of additional names they could have used that fit this formula: Hoss Firewall, Jackson Ridge, Jet Burleson, etc. There's the inclusion of real NASCAR drivers in the movie like "King" Richard Petty and others to help introduce realism into the movie, and here it somewhat succeeds. The races look real and one can imagine the rush it must be to hold vehicles together that are largely ginormous engines strapped to four wheels with a steering wheel attached while moving at 200+ miles per hour.

"Days of Thunder" is basically a very mediocre movie with adequate acting and above average racing action. But it is just about the only modern Hollywood feature where you can take a glimpse into the fast paced life of the typical NASCAR driver. And for this reason you'll find it on a lot of NASCAR fans' DVD shelves. If you're interested in stock car racing (and a pre-botox Nicole Kidman) you'll likely enjoy the film.

grrrrr... only english version
i live in colombia, i like very much this movie, but it doesn't have spanish subtitles. :(

TOP GUN + Days of Thunder should be part of all movie collections!
This movie and Top Gun (Widescreen Special Collector's Edition) should be a part of all moviegoers' collection. Not only are they the pinnacle works of Tom Cruise, they incorporate a timeless theme -- speed.

I won't get into the awesomeness that surrounds Top Gun, but that same aura surrounds this movie as well. Starting off as a nobody but a reckless driver, Tom Cruise drives and performs better than any rookie. It is through this driving does he find it within himself a passion and he grows and matures like a caterpillar to a butterfly in a short 2 hours.

Awesome movie, 'nuff said.