Posted: Sun., Dec. 31, 1989, 11:00pm PT

Days of Thunder

By Variety Staff

Paramount. Director Tony Scott; Producer Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckheimer; Screenplay Robert Towne; Camera Ward Russell; Editor Billy Weber, Chris Lebenzon; Music Hans Zimmer; Art Director Benjamin Fernandez, Thomas E. Sanders

Tom Cruise Robert Duvall Nicole Kidman Randy Quaid Michael Rooker Cary Elwes

This expensive genre film about stock car racing has many of the elements that made the same team's Top Gun a blockbuster, but the producers recruited scripter Robert Towne to make more out of the story [by Towne and Tom Cruise] than junk food.

There's the cocky but insecure young challenger (Tom Cruise) breaking into the big time, the hardened champion he's trying to unseat (Michael Rooker), the grizzled manager who dispenses fatherly wisdom (Robert Duvall), the crass promoter (Randy Quaid), and the sexy lady from outside (Nicole Kidman) who questions the point of it all.

Director Tony Scott plunges the viewer into the maelstrom of stock car racing. A highly effective blending of car-mounted camerawork and long lenses imparts documentary credibility and impact.

Days of Thunder zigzags between exploiting Cruise's likable grin and charming vulnerability and portraying him as an emotional loser. It's an uncertain and unsatisfying mix.

The film's real glory is Duvall. His duplicitous, ruthless streak hovers just below the surface, giving a sense of inner danger to the racing scenes in which he coaches the untrusting Cruise by radio from trackside.

1990: Nomination: Best Sound

(Color) Widescreen. Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1990. Running time: 107 MIN.