Racing Films

I don’t remember watching this film when it originally came out but it had a big effect on my life as two of my favourite matchbox cars were the replica Days of Thunder cars.  ("man where are those cars now?  They were awesome" I have now wasted hours frantically looking for them) Mistakenly I thought this was a film about motor racing, how wrong was I when I realised that even before “# me too” this film tackled the difficult topics of sexual harassment, stalking and the lasting behavioural impacts of traumatic head injuries.

The unrealistic recreation of motor racing is just a vehicle to get us to the intense drama where our main characters dig deep into those very real present day issues of misogyny and sexual harassment.  After a shocking crash our main character Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) ends up in hospital which is where we get introduced to the hero of the film, Dr. Claire Lewicki (Nicole Kidman).  Initially no one in the film including Trickle can believe that a female would make a competent doctor, purely believing that any woman in a uniform must be a stripper desperate to perform sexual acts.  Once Trickle discovers Lewicki is a real doctor he instantly falls for her, remembering this is a role played by Nicole Kidman, this is a level attraction that could only be explained by the fact he is recovering from a traumatic head injury.

The head injury has a significant impact on Trickle’s character as he proceeds with a number of persistent abusive behaviours to force Lewicki, by any means necessary, into sleeping with him against her well educated will.  Trickle’s abusive behaviours include, obsessively phoning her at work, stalking her at work, following her home and presumably breaking into her apartment to fill it with flowers and balloons.  Unfortunately for Lewicki she does not call the cops, in fact, apart from an earlier scene with a stripper dressed as female cop the city of Charlotte where this film is set has a disturbingly low law enforcement presence.

Lewicki, like many women faced with this sort of relentless manipulation, succumbs to Trickle.  Once Trickle gets Lewicki into bed things must have been somewhat disappointing for her as he only proceeds with a bizarre form of foreplay by explaining how drafting works in a race using two condoms as the cars and Lewicki’s leg as the racetrack.  Wow! So hot!

Trickle and his main rival Rowdy Burns later take advantage of the complete lack of real Police when they engage in a dangerous and destructive rental car race from their hospital beds to a racetrack.  This rental car race is apparently based on true events involving racing driver Willy T Ribbs as described in the film ‘Uppity’.  Although another account reports that these events were based on the antics of Joe Weatherly and Curtis Turner who raced in the 1950s.  History lesson aside the rental car race presents the most realistic racing action in the entire film.

Another highlight for me was seeing John C Riley’s appearance in the film as the troubled Buck Bretherton.  The talents shown here were just a glimpse of what Riley would later offer the racing film world with a major role ‘Taledega Nights’ nearly two decades later.

Despite a mega budget, some star power and massive marketing ‘Days of Thunder’ was a major flop at the box office.  The film may have appealed to young kids like me with matchbox cars but they couldn't see it because of it's PG13 rating.  It only just managed to scrape this as it is one of the few PG13 films that uses the word 'fuck' in a sexual context.  'Fuck' was really the only issue that inflated the rating, exposing children to creepy stalking behaviours was not a concern of the ratings office at the time.  True race fans couldn’t relate to it and non-race fans just weren’t interested to go and watch a racing film with a predictable plot, awful characters and a heavy reliance on stereotyping people involved in motor racing.  Richard Petty summed up this film better than I ever could when he said, “The only thing they got right was the numbers on the side of the cars”.