Days of Thunder

Tom Cruise strapped into a stock car at the height of his early stardom, Tony Scott behind the camera, and Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson producing: Days of Thunder arrived in June 1990 as a full-throttle summer movie. Cruise plays Cole Trickle, a young driver with raw speed and almost no patience for the rules of NASCAR. Robert Duvall is Harry Hogge, the veteran crew chief who agrees to build a team around him. Nicole Kidman, in one of her first American roles, plays Dr. Claire Lewicki, the neurosurgeon who treats Cole after a violent crash and becomes part of his recovery. The film cost about $60 million, a huge figure for a racing picture at the time, and Paramount released it on June 27, 1990. It went on to earn $157.9 million worldwide. Scott brought the same glossy, sun-baked visual style he had used on Top Gun, with Ward Russell shooting the racing sequences and Hans Zimmer composing the score. The tone sits somewhere between sports drama and big-budget spectacle: fast cars, loud engines, and a hero who has to learn humility before he can win. The supporting cast includes Michael Rooker as Rowdy Burns, the rival who becomes something like a mentor, Randy Quaid as team owner Tim Dalander, and Cary Elwes as the smug young driver Russ Wheeler. Critics were mixed when it opened, and the film holds a middling 6.4 rating on IMDb, but it found a lasting audience among racing fans and remains a touchstone for stock car movies.[edit]