‘Days of Thunder’ or — An Exercise in Self-Annihilation?
“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” I laughed to myself last night. “My friend told me to watch ‘Days of Thunder’ (1990) because it was shit and I’d find it annoying. Well, the jokes on them because I’m actually enjoying this. In fact, even though she’s still to make her appearance I think this is a better Kidman/Cruise movie than Kubrick’s appalling ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (1999). D’ya hear that world? ‘Days of Thunder’ is better than ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and I don’t care who knows it!”
And then I checked the time and discovered I was only fifteen minutes into the movie and that it was just as well I didn’t die of a brain embolism or anything before it finished because ‘Days of Thunder’ is fucking awful and most certainly NOT better than ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ so the notion of people thinking my last words on this planet were “’Days of Thunder’ is better than ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and I don’t care who knows it!” is something I wouldn’t have been able to live with.
The film falls apart almost immediately. A racing team are looking for a new driver, a driver just like Tom Cruise. And then Tom Cruise magically appears in the most Tom Cruise way possible — riding a motorcycle through a cloud of smoke and looking like a badly drawn anime character.
Tom Cruise is the best racing driver that’s ever existed and possesses a talent behind the wheel so extraordinary it’s never been seen before. There’s only one problem — he doesn’t know what a car is.
I’m not exaggerating. Tom Cruise’s character is such an idiot and knows so little about cars that he literally doesn’t know what they are. Now you would think that to be the world’s greatest racing driver that one of the basic requirements would be to know what a car is, but that doesn’t stop Tom Cruise and after being told what the wheels do he’s back out on the track even though he has no idea what the moving object he’s sitting in actually is or does.
Robert Duvall plays Tom Cruise’s mentor which involves mentoring Tom Cruise constantly and telling him what cars are. That and acquiring Tom Cruise prostitutes… prostitutes Tom Cruise’s character happily accepts and sleeps with while his friends all laugh. (?!)
Tom Cruise then has a terrible car crash and while he’s in hospital he meets Nicole Kidman who is his doctor and also a nihilist (possibly because she’s aware she’s in this movie), but Tom Cruise assumes she’s also a prostitute so sexually assaults her… and his friends all laugh at this too. (??!!)
Robert Duvall then rushes up to Nicole Kidman to, we presume, apologise but that’s only because we’re idiots as it’s actually to convince Nicole Kidman that, as Tom Cruise’s doctor, that if she wants him to get better then the best way for that to happen is for her to sleep with him… which she does. (???!!!)
Amazingly it works as it turns out that the best cure for being in a wheelchair is Nicole Kidman’s magical vagina. We also discover that this is the only function Nicole Kidman’s character serves — to fuck Tom Cruise back to health and then serve no other purpose in the movie whatsoever.
Anyway, now Tom Cruise is back to full strength he’s back out on the track for the final race and then the movie ends. And when I say “ends” I mean it just completely gives up and auto-terminates with no discernable moment to signify when it does. And trust me, I know what I’m talking about.
You see, I’ve re-watched the climax to ‘Days of Thunder’ 17 times in the last 24 hours and I’ve still not been able to accurately identify the precise moment the movie technically ends. I’m like one of those conspiracy theorists endlessly going over the Zapruder footage trying to glimpse the muzzle flash on the grassy knoll except instead I’m trying to discover the exact point ‘Days of Thunder’ finishes and I still can’t locate it. It’s so abrupt it’s almost as though the film suddenly decides to cease to exist, like it’s achieved a form of self-awareness and is so depressed by its own existence that it simply throws in the towel and heads off to Dignitas.
‘Days of Thunder’ is bloody awful and has the feeling it was made by people who hold the human race in utter contempt. Visually and narratively it’s such a complete mess we end up not so much watching it as observing it disintegrate into nothing before our very eyes.
The audience, however, experience no such bliss and we must carry the pain for the rest of our lives.
