Days of Thunder [Tony Scott, 1990]:
What works is the action. The blur of color and movement as cars jockey for position, the thrum of engines, the sound of tires screeching. It’s in the thrill of the race - the rush of noise and movement - that the film springs to life, proving a technical tour de force for director Tony Scott and his crew. What doesn’t work is everything else. The dull protagonist, the unconvincing romance, the generic rivalries turned into friendships.
As screenwriter, Robert Towne can’t decide if he wants the film to be a straight rags-to-riches racing drama, a knockabout study on male ego and the rivalries between men, a sombre medical drama in which characters overcome trauma, a redemption story for a character haunted by past mistakes, or a generic love story ripped from the cheapest of daytime soap opera.
The screenplay sets all these different elements against one another in the most predictable way possible, and rather than develop them into a coherent narrative or character study, merely watches them go around a few laps, like these cars on a race track. It feels like a succession of scenes that were written the night before the shoot and survived the final cut due to the insistence of Paramount’s publicity department. By no means terrible, but definitely a film in conflict with itself.
