Just this side of risible, but okay

Rating: 7/10 (27 August 1999)

I don't know why I'm so kindly disposed towards this movie. Maybe it's because Nicole Kidman was allowed to keep her Australian accent. Maybe it's my reaction to injustice: this was much better than the god-awful `Top Gun', and yet the public clasped the latter to its bosom, and let the former die. Maybe the sheer volume of 1980s kitsch disarms me. Maybe I'm just in a genial mood.
Well, anyway: here's how it's better than `Top Gun'. There's a story. Maybe you can see not only the ending but every aspect of it from much more than a mile away - considering the speed at which these guys are racing, I'd say from about 90 miles away - but it's a bona fide, reasonably good story nonetheless. It's more mature than `Top Gun', for what that's worth. Tom Cruise is less of an irresponsible hoon when he's simply risking his own life and a few thousand dollars of sponsorship money, than when he's risking his own life, several million dollars of public money, and the fate of nations. Moreover there's a decent explanation for WHY he's an irresponsible hoon that makes us (me, anyway) actually like him.
Now here's what's wrong. The sport that all but one of the characters dedicate their lives to is `stock car racing', so called because each racer gets a stock car, pretty much identical to all the other cars. There: now you know as much as I do, and I've SEEN the movie. Nothing is as intrinsically dull as watching cars race each other - unless it's watching fighter jets move around - so the least they could have done was explain to us what's going on. I notice that part-way through each race a car may stop to be serviced. How does that work? What kind of race is it where a driver can stop part way through and still win? During the final race they casually let slip that Cruise has 45 seconds more he is allowed to spend at the pit stop before he's out of the race. What's this time limit? Where does it come from? WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME WHAT'S GOING ON?
Clear exposition isn't helped by the photography, which makes a race track look much less ugly than it otherwise would, and even generates nice images, but obscures the narrative. Scott, Simpson and Bruckheimer give us their beloved graduated tobacco filter shots whenever the sky would otherwise appear - does anyone else get tired of that? But much worse is the CONSTANT use of telephoto lenses. In almost every shot it looks as if the camera is on the other side of the stadium and not ONCE do we get an image of good explanatory value. Still, as I say, they're nice images. It's a nice enough movie. But I won't go any further than that.