ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006280393
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: E-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CHRIS GLADDEN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


ENGINES ROAR, STORY SPOTTERS IN `THUNDER'

A couple of decades back, "Days of Thunder" would have been a respectable, sun-belt movie geared to the drive-in trade.

There's an implausible love story about a brilliant and beautiful doctor and a handsome, gung-ho stock car driver. There's a folksy race car builder (Robert Duvall) on hand for humor. There are cliches aplenty and a win-one-for-the-Gipper plot device. Shoot, if Elvis had starred in it the movie might have cost more than a million to make.

But this is 1990. The crew behind the immensely successful "Top Gun" is behind this movie. Mega-star Tom Cruise plays the stock car racer. Screenwriting legend Robert Towne fleshed out the script, based on an idea from Cruise. And the movie's budget is a reputed $55 million, which some observers say is too low. "Days of Thunder" is being trumpeted as a movie event.

As a movie event, it makes an OK drive-in movie.

"Days of Thunder" is patched together from parts of other Tom Cruise movies: the beautiful intellectual love interest ("Top Gun"); the older mentor ("The Color of Money," "Cocktail"); the injured Tom Cruise in a wheel chair ("Born on the Fourth of July"); the luckless buddy ("Top Gun"); the smarty-pants rival ("Top Gun").

To its credit, this calculated pastiche offers an enjoyable performance from Duvall, when he's not talking to the cars he builds, and it has some pretty brisk action sequences on the race track. Cruise is solid, and Nicole Kidman is convincing as the doctor who is an oasis of reason amid the blistering foolishness of the good-old-boy code the menfolk adhere to.

Cruise plays young Cole Trinkle, a California racer of Indianapolis-style cars whose crooked father causes him to leave the sport. He comes to the South - much of the movie was filmed in Charlotte, N.C. - to regain his name by racing on the NASCAR circuit. Duvall plays Harry, the ace mechanic who comes out of retirement to build Cruise a car. And Randy Quaid plays the car's owner who puts Harry and Cole together.

At first there's the usual antagonism between the mechanic and the driver until Cole confides to Harry in one of the movie's several implausible moments that he became a brilliant driver without learning the first thing about cars. Then there's the antagonism between the pretty doctor and Cole. And there's the antagonism between Rowdy (Michael Rooker), a rival driver, and Cole, until the two become friends. Poor Cary Elwes plays Russ, another driver. He's the only one in the movie whose antagonistic relationship with Cole doesn't turn into something warm and wonderful.

Director Tony Scott (`Top Gun") knows how to make a movie look good, and he has the race footage shot from every possible angle. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't confine its wrecks to the track. Cole's reaction to any upsetting situation is to go out and run into cars whether he's on or off the oval. Despite Cruise's intelligence as an actor, his character here doesn't seem to be a particularly smart young man.

Like "Top Gun," "Days of Thunder" is a movie with a lot of noise and speed and not enough story to hang a crash helmet on. `Days of Thunder' A Paramount picture at Tanglewood Mall Cinema (989-6165) and Terrace Theatre (366-1677). An hour and 50 minutes. Rated PG-13 for language, car crashes and a bedroom scene.



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