Product Description

From the engine roar and fever pitch of professional stock car racing, Days of Thunder explodes with the most spectacular racing action ever captured on film. Tom Cruise plays race driver Cole Trickle, whose talent and ambition are surpassed only by his burning need to win. Discovered by businessman Tim Daland (Randy Quaid), Cole is teamed with legendary crew chief and car-builder Harry Hogge (Academy Award. winner Robert Duvall) to race for the Winston Cup at the Daytona 500. A fiery crash nearly ends Cole's career and he must turn to a beautiful doctor (Nicole Kidman) to regain his nerve and the true courage needed to race, to win and to live.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4853 in DVD
• Brand: PARAMOUNT HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2008-12-30
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: AC-3, Dolby, Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English, French, Spanish
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 107 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
With Days of Thunder, director Tony Scott tried to do for the Indy 500 what he did for the U.S. Air Force with Top Gun. But without Top Gun's go-go soundtrack and visual feats, Scott merely ends up with a Tom Cruise vehicle that's out of gas.

Cruise plays (what else?) a cocky, upstart stock-car racer who faces down ruthless racing opponents. Nicole Kidman, Robert Duvall, Cary Elwes, and Randy Quaid do the laps around this movie's tiresome track with Cruise, while director Scott attempts to propel the action along with his trademark visceral, gritty but glamorous visual style.

Days of Thunder is notable, however, as a turning point in Cruise's then one-dimensional career. After this film--having tired even his most devoted fans by playing a bartender, an air force pilot, and a stock-car driver--Cruise was forced to take on real character parts. --Ethan Brown

From The New Yorker
This new Tom Cruise vehicle, directed by Tony Scott, is the latest example of the nearly demagogic brand of pop-culture uplift practiced by the producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. (They were also responsible for "Flashdance" and "Top Gun.") It's about winning, and nothing else. The setting this time is the stock-car racing circuit. The screenwriter, Robert Towne, seems to be trying to underplay the rah-rah elements of the material-to give competition some point other than pure ego gratification. And he supplies some nice dialogue: easy, natural-sounding macho banter among the drivers and their crews. But the movie has been stripped for speed: by the big race (the Daytona 500), all the ambiguities in the script have been removed, and there's nothing to interfere with Cruise's, and the producers', streak to the finish line. Like the previous Simpson-Bruckheimer pictures, it's designed-engineered, really-to give audiences an overdose of the thrill of victory; it wants us to jump out of our seats, pumping our fists in the air and roaring for the hero to pulverize his opponents. The racing sequences are very ordinary. Also with Robert Duvall, who gives a lively performance as the hero's mentor, and Michael Rooker, Nicole Kidman, Randy Quaid, and Cary Elwes.-T.R. (7/16/90) -Terrence Rafferty
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker