A very predictable movie about stock car racing

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2011)

Stock car racing is not really that much of an interest to me and as such I was not really all that interested in this film. I decided to watch it though because it is one of those movies that a lot of people have seen. As such we become one of the masses by watching this movie.
My opinion was that it is all right. I am in two minds about Tom Cruise's entrance to the movie. We spend about five minutes hearing about a great new driver and Cruise enters all arrogant, macho like acting as if he knows everything. On the track he seems good but when he is put in the actual race he seems to be quite panicky about the style of racer. If he was that good then I doubt he would be freaking out on the track. But I guess that is a part of the character of Cole Trickler (stupid name I think). He is a natural driver, but driving on an empty track and driving on a track full of other drivers are two different things.
Days of Thunder is about macho contests (I have chosen not to be crude here). Basically it is about a group of men trying to prove who is the manliest of the lot of them. In this contest people get hurt, and even killed, but that doesn't stop them. In fact, as quoted in the movie, they refuse to go to a hospital or even a funeral so that the inevitable is as far from their mind as possible.
Plot wise I predicted it quite accurately. He becomes a racer and is good but has a nasty crash. He goes to hospital, meets the love interest (Nicole Kidman) and then goes back to racing where he wins the big race. The plot is not all that thin though because there is a relationship element in the film as well: not the shallow relationship between him and Kidman, but rather between him and another driver. At first they are rivals but after the crash, they are brought together, and though they have a smash up with a couple of rent-a-cars, they soon become friends after the steam has been vented.
What used to be a movie on the lips of everybody has now simply faded away to an 11:00 time slot. They claimed that there were a lot of hot scenes between Cruise and Kidman in this movie, but there is not: only for about five minutes in the middle of the movie. What I did like was the style of photography in the film. It has a very dusky feel to it that I thought added depth to the movie. To me, it is an average movie that it okay once but that is as far as I would go.