Days of Thunder

If you haven’t seen ‘Days of Thunder’, it’s basically the exact plot of ‘Top Gun’, except all the airplanes are racecars and the story is significantly slower and more ponderous.

Tom Cruise leans heavily into type here, playing a cocky young hotshot racecar driver who is (say it with us) the best of the best. With the help of Robert Duvall, the world’s greatest pit crew chief, Tom Cruise wins a lot of races and dates Nicole Kidman, but then he gets in a wreck and is sad, but then he’s the best of the best again. A simple, age-old tale, perhaps, but it takes a long time to get through because they show a LOT of car races.

Released in 1990, ‘Days of Thunder’ reunited Tom Cruise with Tony Scott, director of ‘Top Gun’ and producer Jerry Bruckheimer for a legendarily troubled production. There was also a Mello-Yello promotional advertising campaign.

Brian and Hemal had mixed feelings about the film. Brian objected to all the interminable car racing, while Hemal was more upset that they got the pace car rules wrong. Either way, you should probably listen to this episode.