#10 in my ranking of Tony Scott’s filmography.
I’ve seen this once before, but it’s been a while. I couldn’t say why I had this middling feeling about it, but the first half of the film had me questioning that middling feeling from before. This was fun stuff from Scott, Simpson, and Bruckheimer. It really did seem like this rather ideal distillation of their obsession with male-dominated relationships and things that go vroom. And then…the second half started where it was supposed to get serious, and it just never recovered. They didn’t commit to fun, they had to suddenly decide on dramatic import all while having no idea how to get to it.
Cole (Tom Cruise) is a new driver for a new NASCAR driving team owned by Tim (Randy Quaid) and run by Harry (Robert Duvall). The relationship between Cole and Harry starts fraught because Harry doesn’t believe in Cole, Cole won’t listen to Harry’s advice from years managing racing teams, and they’re racing efforts become defined by a brewing rivalry with the reigning champ, Rowdy (Michael Rooker). Cole keeps melting his tires, crashing into everything, and blowing out engines, and it’s going to take Harry’s guiding hand to get him on track.
This is not groundbreaking stuff, but it is a grounding for what is to come. In particular, though, it seems like a playground for Duvall to have a blast in. Cruise is trying to give Cole all of the dramatic weight his somewhat limited range will give, but Duvall is just there to laugh, smirk, and half-seriously provide wisdom to the younger kid. Imagine if Paul Newman hadn’t taken anything seriously in The Color of Money. That attitude is a real advantage for the film because it provides a good amount of the sense of fun in the first half. Duvall simply lightens the mood in every scene he’s in, and he’s in a lot.
The first half also has something of its own dramatic structure, centered around the rivalry between Cole and Rowdy. It escalates as Cole gets better at driving, listening to Harry along the way, until a huge crash that injures them both with president of NASCAR, Big John (Fred Thompson), demanding that they learn to get along, allowing for another budding bromance in the film. Unfortunately, while these scenes of Cole and Rowdy getting to like each other through their own bits of off-track racing, this is also where the film really begins to fall apart. I mean, I really liked the first half of the film. It’s probably the best thing that Tony Scott has made up to this point.
But then they introduce Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman). I’m not saying that Kidman is bad, or anything, or that she and her future husband, Cruise, don’t have chemistry. It’s just that Lewicki, at best, provides us with the concerned girl on the side of the track as our hero does dangerous things. She doesn’t add much beyond rote character beats. And, with the rivalry over and bromance born between Cole and Rowdy, there’s now no dramatic tension or stakes for the second half of the film. Que the entrance of Russ (Cary Elwes), introduced in a brief scene as Cole’s backup when he’s injured and then given prominent status as his rival because Tim hires him to lead a second team. All of the energies at rivalry in the first are discarded to be immediately replaced by someone else with less motivation around it all.
And then, we just get other random bits of things that should be increasing dramatic stakes like Rowdy not healing as well as Cole, needing money but not being able to race, so Cole decides to race for him because he got fired by Tim. It’s a hodgepodge of reasons, and the movie doesn’t even really stick to them. The whole reason Cole decides to enter the finale race at Daytona is because Rowdy talks him into it, but Rowdy is never seen or heard from again once the race starts. Even at the end, Cole doesn’t have a moment to make note of the friend he just did this for.
Another issue I have with the film is the racing scenes. Don’t get me wrong. They’re thrillingly filmed, it’s just that there’s so many of them while they all tend to look kind of the same. There’s only so much variation you can throw at an audience of cars going in circles, especially when every single race shown has a crash in it. This is a contrast to Top Gun where the finale had actual explosions while everything up to it was just cool aircraft doing cool things. There was an escalation there that Days of Thunder can’t do because it did too many crashes too early. The only real difference becomes what sponsor is on Cole’s car.
So, the first half is actually quite fun, doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is just generally a high-adrenaline good time at the movies. The second half is a hodgepodge of dramatic nonsense that never connects and the movie doesn’t actually care about. This is a real mixed bag.
Originally published here
English (US) · 