Based on short stories from Robert Boswell's collection, seven vignettes explore the difference between fantasy and reality, memory and history, and the joy and agony of the human condition.
Double crosses, adultery, murder, mistaken identity, and revenge ensue when a mysterious power player and his sultry wife hire a disgraced Los Angeles property broker to discreetly market and sell their Malibu villa.
As students at the United States Navy's elite fighter weapons school compete to be best in the class, one daring young pilot learns a few things from a civilian instructor that are not taught in the classroom.
While transporting a dying man to the hospital, two paramedics find a million dollars in cash sewn into his clothing. When the man dies, they decide to keep it, setting them on a path for a hellish night of violence and mayhem.
Director:
Tom Oesch
Stars:
Tom Everett Scott,
James Jurdi,
Angélica Celaya
The biography of Ron Kovic. Paralyzed in the Vietnam war, he becomes an anti-war and pro-human rights political activist after feeling betrayed by the country he fought for.
Director:
Oliver Stone
Stars:
Tom Cruise,
Raymond J. Barry,
Caroline Kava
When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent agent with the only athlete who stays with him and his former secretary.
Director:
Cameron Crowe
Stars:
Tom Cruise,
Cuba Gooding Jr.,
Renée Zellweger
Cole Trickle enters the high-pressure world of Nascar racing. He's a hot driver with a hot temper, and this attitude gets him into trouble not only with other drivers, but members of his own team as well.Written by
Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>
Nicole Kidman wanted to study neurosurgery for her part, but the producers told her it would be a waste of time. See more »
Goofs
When Rowdy gets mad that Cole is going to pass him and Rowdy says, "I'm going to put him in the wall," which would have summarily resulted in Rowdy being black flagged for the race (and probably more than one race after that), cars that are traveling at 200 miles per hour do not bounce off each other and keep going straight ahead. Cole's car, or Rowdy's car, would have hit the wall, spun off the track, flipped or rolled multiple times, smashing into a thousand pieces and taking several other cars out with them. See more »
Eager for a winning formula, team owner Tim Daland puts together the inexperienced but naturally talented Cole Trickle and the retired but skilled mechanic Harry Hogge to hopefully bounce off each other to create a winning combination. After the expected bumps and friction between the two, they seem to blend well and start winning races. However, a major accident between Cole and his main rival, Rowdy Burns, puts them both in the hospital under the care of the professional and leggy Dr Lewicki. But will Cole be able to overcome the physical and mental scars that he got.
The comedian Rich Hall did a great routine once where he summed up the films of Tom Cruise by basically saying that each of them involves him being great at his job (pilot, bartender, driver) before suffering a crisis of confidence but meeting a beautiful lady who helps him over it in time to come good hilarious in the telling because he was right and, true to form, Days of Thunder sets its stall out in the same way. That the plot is formulaic (father/son stuff, macho posturing, love interest, final big race etc) and it is a bit tiring at times because it is nothing new and it produces large sags during the film. The father/son stuff is OK if hackneyed but the romance is so sudden and fake that it left me cool and never engaged once. The racing stuff is fun, noisy and fast which I suppose is what most of its audience want; but this is still not a great action movie but kudos to Scott for managing to make a load of cars going round a circular track appear exciting.
The cast is more impressive on paper than they are in reality. Cruise plays his usual character and does it with no real charm or ability. He is trading off his fame here and his macho nonsense is rather tiresome. Kidman may have been Cruise's offscreen partner but viewers of this film will have seen their divorce coming because they have zero chemistry and she is poor throughout. It's not all her fault though, the script gives her nothing to work with. Thank god then, for Robert Duvall; he may be playing a fairly clichéd character but he does it well and steals every scene from his pretty but empty co-star. Support is good from Quaid and Rooker but Ewles is given too little time to make anything but a negative impression and Reilly had yet to prove his versatility and doesn't do it here.
Overall this is very much painting by the numbers in many regards. The plot is easy and lacks any sort of spark or innovation meaning that, when the cars are off the screen, it is easy for the film to get dull. The action scenes are OK but, as with F1, I find many motor sports to be dull and didn't get drawn into the predictable races as much as I wanted to. The script gives the cast nothing to really work with, and only Duvall comes out with any real dignity even if he has a cliché as opposed to a real person to play. This has all the failings you would expect and the end result of so little imagination is an average film that is watchable but no more than that.
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Eager for a winning formula, team owner Tim Daland puts together the inexperienced but naturally talented Cole Trickle and the retired but skilled mechanic Harry Hogge to hopefully bounce off each other to create a winning combination. After the expected bumps and friction between the two, they seem to blend well and start winning races. However, a major accident between Cole and his main rival, Rowdy Burns, puts them both in the hospital under the care of the professional and leggy Dr Lewicki. But will Cole be able to overcome the physical and mental scars that he got.
The comedian Rich Hall did a great routine once where he summed up the films of Tom Cruise by basically saying that each of them involves him being great at his job (pilot, bartender, driver) before suffering a crisis of confidence but meeting a beautiful lady who helps him over it in time to come good hilarious in the telling because he was right and, true to form, Days of Thunder sets its stall out in the same way. That the plot is formulaic (father/son stuff, macho posturing, love interest, final big race etc) and it is a bit tiring at times because it is nothing new and it produces large sags during the film. The father/son stuff is OK if hackneyed but the romance is so sudden and fake that it left me cool and never engaged once. The racing stuff is fun, noisy and fast which I suppose is what most of its audience want; but this is still not a great action movie but kudos to Scott for managing to make a load of cars going round a circular track appear exciting.
The cast is more impressive on paper than they are in reality. Cruise plays his usual character and does it with no real charm or ability. He is trading off his fame here and his macho nonsense is rather tiresome. Kidman may have been Cruise's offscreen partner but viewers of this film will have seen their divorce coming because they have zero chemistry and she is poor throughout. It's not all her fault though, the script gives her nothing to work with. Thank god then, for Robert Duvall; he may be playing a fairly clichéd character but he does it well and steals every scene from his pretty but empty co-star. Support is good from Quaid and Rooker but Ewles is given too little time to make anything but a negative impression and Reilly had yet to prove his versatility and doesn't do it here.
Overall this is very much painting by the numbers in many regards. The plot is easy and lacks any sort of spark or innovation meaning that, when the cars are off the screen, it is easy for the film to get dull. The action scenes are OK but, as with F1, I find many motor sports to be dull and didn't get drawn into the predictable races as much as I wanted to. The script gives the cast nothing to really work with, and only Duvall comes out with any real dignity even if he has a cliché as opposed to a real person to play. This has all the failings you would expect and the end result of so little imagination is an average film that is watchable but no more than that.