Customer Reviews

Days of Thunder (Widescreen)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I received the product in good time but when my Dad opened it as his Christmas present and tried to play it, it was region blocked. We then figured out that it is a Region 2 DVD that can only be played in JAPAN. Why this Dvd would be sold on Amazon.ca confuses me... Although the DVD was not expensive it was a total waste of money as my Dad can't watch it.

Ok i have not seen the movie here but i just wanted to correct the review posted by amazon.com. The movie Top gun was not about the United States Air Force in any way shape or form. It was Navy all the way

the third in the ' i am sooooo hot and shallow gals ' tom cruise trilogy (top gun and cocktails being 1 and 2 ).
this thing made millions of course. no wonder europeans think us so stupid.

First of all, the Amazon.com reviewer must not know anything about racing, as this film has nothing to do with the Indy 500, and neither does NASCAR (except for racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the annual Brickyard 400). That said, the movie, though it features lots of unrealistic driving (err, crashing) scenes and less-than-stunning acting, still isn't the worst way to spend a couple hours if you've got the racing bug. As pointed out by other reviewers, Robert Duvall gives a great performance as Tom Cruise's crew chief who comes out of retirement to bring Cole Trickle (Cruise's character) to the top of the NASCAR ranks. Cruise's own performance is sufficient, given the character, as is Randy Quaid's. Nicole Kidman seemed to be trying too hard to be emotionless in this movie. Maybe the writers/directors told her to, I don't know. The racing scenes where the drivers aren't running each other into the wall are decent enough, and the car sounds are pretty good. If you want a great racing movie, try "LeMans" or (when it comes out on DVD) "Grand Prix." I really wish we had a truly great modern racing movie, especially about Formula One or CART/Indy car racing ("Driven" doesn't count--it sucked). Maybe someday...

Dude I have never seen this movie but what i will say is this. The Editor who said Top Gun was a US Air Force movie is an idiot. You obviously did not watch Top Gun because then you would have realized it was a Navy movie. In my book you have lost all credibility, and should lose your job.

If you don't even think about all the technical errors made its a great movie. They have real drivers in it like Richard Petty. They created a great version of a hot young driver trying to become the best driver. Cole also seems to resemble Tony Stewart being a hotshot rookie. Its obvious Cole wasn't based on Jeff Gordon but a hot young rookie which Jeff Gordon resembled. People can compare him to Jeff and other hot rookies like Jimmie Johnson. If you love NASCAR you'll love this movie. Memorable parts and quotes.

Man oh man.

Where do I start? How about with the script? Now that that's taken care of how about the acting? The acting was absolutely atrocious. I believed that Tom Cruise was a Nascar driver for about a tenth of a nano-second. He sounds nothing like a Nascar driver, he doesn't plug sponsors like crazy, and he sure as hell doesn't look tough and weathered from racing. Nicole Kidman breaks out an unforgettable performance, but this movie did come after "Far and Away" so she had no where to go but up. Robert Duvall is far from the days of Lt. Col. Kilgore and it really saddens me. The man was such a hard ass in "Apocolypse Now" and now he loves the smell of pit fumes while eating Crunch bars while his flamboyant driver makes left turns all day. Who can forget John C. Reilley in this one. This was long before the days of "Boogie Nights" and Reed Rothchild.

The plot. Um....let's see. Nope....not here.

I'm tired of ranting about this movie. This movie sucked. Tony Scott sucks. Top Gun sucked. Tom Cruise sucks....most of the time (except for Minority Report and Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky). Carey Elwes is just hilarious. He tries to hide the British accent, but he just can't do it.

Bottom line: This movie comes near me I'm going to put it into the wall.

Later,

Harry Houdini

Being a NASCAR fan I found this movie boring. The racing parts were dull and unrealistic. All this movie is is Top Gun in race cars.

Days of Thunder is an entertaining film boasting a great performance by Robert Duvall and a few exciting, albeit semi-ludicrous, racing scenes. As a whole, though, this film chugs along near empty, lacking any real oomph. Tom Cruise plays reckless upstart Cole Trickle, a race car driver who has decided to make the jump from Outlaw and open wheel racing to stock car racing. Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) is the former car builder and crew chief that used car salesman and new car owner Tim Daland (Randy Quaid) wants to bring on board to work with Trickle. Trickle is as wild on the track as he is off, and all of the talent he definitely has seems wasted as he and Harry are almost completely incapable of communicating with one another. Eventually, there's a breakthrough, and Cole wins a few races. At the Firecracker 400 in Daytona, though, Cole is involved in a major wreck along with his nemesis Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker). It is here that Nicole Kidman enters the picture as Cole's doctor Claire Lewicki. Cole's recovery from the crash involves more than just physical healing, and there's a new, thoroughly sleazy upstart in the circuit whom Cole must now contend with. There's an interesting yet unfulfilled subplot about Rowdy's injury and his way of dealing with it as well as a romantic theme that basically goes nowhere; clearly, the action on the track is what the filmmakers were banking on in terms of the movie's success.

NASCAR wasn't as big back in 1990 as it is now, but even then you didn't have to grow up in NASCAR country like I did to see how ridiculous most of the racing action in this film was. Anyone with no knowledge whatsoever of stock car racing would get the impression from Days of Thunder that the whole point of driving is to wreck all the other cars. These cars spend an inordinate amount of time crashing and banging each other as well as the wall, yet amazingly enough battered old wrecks easily catapult themselves back into the top five. The damage these cars sustain would wreck the aerodynamics to such a degree that they couldn't keep up with the pace car in real life. Even still, the scenes can prove a little exciting, especially the big finish back at the Daytona 500.

As a loyal fan of the late Dale Earnhart, this movie makes me feel a little weird because part of the storyline involves a driver being killed at the Daytona 500 the previous year. It's also a little strange to watch Nicole Kidman, as she really didn't seem to offer very much on screen this early in her career. Her Australian accent is more pronounced than it is today, and her hair was still all frizzy in the way that made me question why Tom Cruise was so attracted to her in the first place. I think Tom and Nicole may have originally met on the set of this film (but I could be wrong about this), and oddly enough their onscreen relationship seems to have no spark of life whatsoever. Days of Thunder isn't a bad movie at all, but it's nothing to scream about either. I would offer a word of advice to future viewers of the film; you would do well not to watch the film alongside a NASCAR fan because he/she will likely get on your nerves explaining over and over again how unrealistic the racing scenes really are.

Oh please...this story and the performances are truly so distracting from the speed scenes as to make one feel flattened by one of the cars. It is so macho/cheesy as to make one suffocate from the fumes. I suppose if taking place in the late night adolescent dreams of a kid in Green Bay, this is the equivalent of ecstasy...but in the future give us something more than the carefully bottled and packaged machismo-competition-sexy thing and I'll thrill to the races without wanting to race away from the screen.

Did I mention how cool some of the car races are...