Days of Thunder (1990)

Tom Cruise wants to drive racecars but his feet won't reach the pedals!

Days of Thunder (1990)
Directed by Tony Scott
Screenplay by Robert Towne (believe it or not!)
Story by Robert Towne and Tom Cruise (ahhh, now it all makes sense...)

Well, we’re in for 107 minutes of NASCAR, so let’s get into the spirit of the thing, shall we? Put on that mesh trucker cap with the Confederate flag patch on the front, Polident your partial upper, and chug down a 64-ounce waxed paper cup full of flat, body temperature Budweiser. There.

Gentlemen...Start your movie!

We’re at Daytona, where Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is whizzing around in his little car, laughing as other drivers crash. Cut to a farm in North Carolina, where Randy Quaid tries to convince Robert Duvall to build him a racecar, while Robert attempts to run Randy over with a tractor and spray his crushed skull with liquid fertilizer. Neither one is succeeding.

Randy and Robert show up at the track, to meet and evaluate Randy’s new driver, Tom Cruise. Tom has no experience driving stock cars, and will have to prove himself to a skeptical NASCAR establishment by demonstrating how handsome he is. Tom is aided in this task by the director, who casts a lot of weird-faced hillbilly types in the supporting roles.

Robert agrees to build a car for Tom, and quickly leaves to go have a Flashdance-like welding montage with his crew of greasy, unattractive crackers.

Thirty seconds later, the car is finished, and we’re in Phoenix, Arizona, where a large and loyal following has come out to the track to get heat-stroke.

Henry: Portrait of a Bumper Car Operator proceeds to ram repeatedly into Tom’s rear end, expressing some deep-seated urge that only Freud could figure out. Robert tells Tom that Henry’s only “rubbing” him, and adds, “Rubbing is racing.” So apparently, every weekday the Tokyo subway system is packed with NASCAR drivers.

Tom wins his first race and gets drunk, so we can find out what off-screen tragedy made him obsessed with his dead father this time. It turns out his dad was a fighter pilot who was killed in Vietnam, and...No. Wait. Wrong one. Oh! Right. His father was U.S. Attorney General, and Tom’s afraid his own legal prowess can’t measure...No. No. That’s a different—Ah! Got it. Tom’s dad was a con man who disgraced the family name, and Tom’s trying to redeem himself and find a new father figure, which makes Duvall shift uncomfortably in his seat, and furtively eye the exit.

Realizing this is the key to a successful career as a leading man, crew member John C. Reilly suddenly has an outbreak of Dead Dad, and confesses that his famous racecar-drivin’ pappy croaked at Daytona. But Tom’s not about to be out-Dead Dadded in his own movie, and quickly establishes how much deeper and more profound his own grief is, by having sex with a hooker while the drunken pit crew looks on.

In our next race, Tom and Henry crash, and are airlifted to Supermodel Memorial Hospital, where Tom is placed in the car of Dr. Nicole Kidman. Nicole is a distinguished neurosurgeon, even though she hasn’t had her first period yet, and manages to make the Candy Stripers look wizened.

Now the movie becomes a delightful romp, as Tom mistakes Nicole for a prostitute. During the examination of his brain, he puts her hand on his stick-shift, but she’s repulsed and leaves (Nicole was absent from anatomy class the day they covered the stick-shift). Tom, feeling unloved, splays on the bed in his revealing hospital gown, with his legs spread to the camera. Out in the lobby, the concession stand reports a sudden drop in hot dog sales.

Tom is released, and asks Nicole for a date as she’s getting into her car. She declines, while discreetly attempting to slam his penis in the door. Instead, Tom winds up going out on a date with Henry: Portrait of a Rebound Relationship.

Eventually, Nicole realizes that if she wants any additional screen time, she’s going to have to date Tom. So she cuts cheerleader practice and flies down South, where she flings the little fellow into a wall and sexes him up.

Cut to an IKEA commercial, where Tom and Nicole are lounging on 300-count percale sheets on a Scandinavian lacquered pine bedstead, while Tom attempts to sneak packets of NutraSweet inside Nicole’s vagina.

This is getting weird, so they go visit Henry, and watch him pass out. It’s now obvious that Henry isn’t handsome enough to provide Tom with sufficient competition on the racetrack, so they replace him with Cary Elwes, while Nicole must break the sad news that he is now Henry: Portrait of a Subdural Hematoma.

Meanwhile, Tom has lost his nerve, while Nicole has lost her fake American accent. She gives Tom a Big Speech about Courage, Denial, and Thine Own Self Be True, and ends by saying, “Go to hell, you (unintelligible) son-of-a-bitch! You made me sound like a doctor!” Well, to be fair, he actually made her sound like an out-of-her-depth actress playing Polonius as a hot Australian teenager.

Meanwhile, Randy fires Tom and hires Cary, when he realizes that blondes have more fun. Henry asks Tom to drive his car at Daytona. Cary is sponsored by Hardees. Tom is sponsored by MelloYello. If they crash, they’re going to produce a fairly disgusting Meal Deal.

As the cars roar around the track, Tom’s face becomes caked with oil and grease, until he looks like Al Jolson in Mammy’s Boy; although his teeth remain startlingly white. In the stands, meanwhile, exhaust fumes mix with the smell of off-brand cigarettes and gardenia-scented toilet water.

The End.

When you sit back and absorb the grand and glorious pageant that is NASCAR, it makes you proud to be an American. Oh sure, we have to import oil from the Mid-East, musicals from Great Britain, and ingénues from Australia; but when it comes to Circus Maximus-style spectacles designed to stupefy the tobacco-chewing proletariat, the United States is entirely self-sufficient.

It should be noted that Tom Cruise’s character in Days of Thunder is named “Cole Trickle,” which undoubtedly contributed to his Golden Globe win for “Best Actor in a Lead Role That Sounds Like a Venereal Disease.”

This visionary 1990 film played a major role in the ascendance of NASCAR from obscure, regional sport to national pastime, by highlighting many unknown elements of the stock car racing culture. For instance, if you tell long, rambling, lachrymose stories about your dead and/or felonious dad, your co-workers will buy you a gorgeous hooker, instead of just reminding you to put a cover sheet on your TPS report, and then going out of their way to avoid you in the break room. Also, NASCAR offers many opportunities to stimulate the labia minora of female Doogie Howsers with packets of artificial sweetener (the film’s original title was, Splenda in the Grass). And if condiment-assisted coitus isn’t your thing, there’s always the chance to have your rear bumper rubbed by a hillbilly.

But the most vivid lesson imparted by Days of Thunder is also its most poignant. Like the gladiatorial games of old, the thrill of the race derives from the ever-present threat of death, and in the heat of competition, even your best friend can send you to the hospital, or the graveyard. But eventually, his brain will begin to leak, and he’ll give you the keys to his car, so it all evens out.