My Review of "Days of Thunder"

Days of Thunder is a movie that came out back in 1990. I stars a whole slew of stars back when they were way younger. It's startling to see what some of them looked like when they were young. This is definitely a movie of its time so there are a few triggering scenes that may offend some viewers.

The movie starts off setting the mood for the movie. It takes place in the south of the USA and there are a ton of confederate flags. I know that will trigger a lot of people however this is also a symbol highly regarded in the south as they had a ton of animosity for the Yankees of the north. Some things are never forgotten and they only touched slightly on this.

Nascar is also a homegrown sport of the south. It was invented in the south and so it is and probably always will be a sport of great pride. We then meet Tim and Harry. Tim is a car dealer and he knows that Harry knows his cars. Harry got out of the Nascar scene recently because of a horrific accident that cost the life of one of his drivers. Tim continues to bait Harry into getting him to build him another car. There's a new driver that Tim wants to introduce to Nascar and this guy is apparently going to tear it up.

Then we see a driver named Rowdy who is ripping up the race circuit. His team has agreed to lend Rowdy's car to this new driver Tim's been talking about named Cole. Of course Cole comes in like some hotshot from Indy car racing thinking he knows everything. Rowdy immediately hates him.

When Cole finally gets to show Harry and Tim what he can do in the car they both agree to set up their Nascar team. Of course Rowdy hates him even more as Cole impressed them in his car.

The movie goes into the relationships between the rival car drivers Cole and Rowdy. There's even some drama between the team dynamics between Cole, Harry and Tim. It almost feels like a short TV series all wrapped up into one movie.

My goodness, I have totally forgotten the cheese that came with 80/90s films. It's almost worth watching to see how cringy some of the scenes are. There's a scene where two people are in the hospital and they race each other in wheel chairs for crying out loud. I particularly thought the rental car scene was pretty hilarious. Two drivers just ramming their rental cars at each other with not a care in the world. No one stops them while they're causing such crazy destruction too.

There's elements of sexual harassment in this movie as well. It's played off as fun jokes. Today none of this would fly. I'm really fascinated at how 22 years later this movie can be viewed in such a drastically different way. In many ways we can see what we call today male toxicity and it shows. Guys not going to the doctors because they're worried about their pride. They won't even see each other because they're afraid of their own egos.

The race scenes were actually really good though. They were able to convey a level of excitement that will have you at the edge of your seat. This is a great feat because as predictable as the movie is you're still glued to the action on the screen.

Overall, I would say that I still had fun watching this despite the many problematic scenes in this movie. I know this is terrible to say but that's how movies were back then. Not a lot of people are going to watch this movie but those that can sit through it can still have an okay time. It's nowhere near a masterpiece but it is dumb popcorn fun of the early 90s. That's why I have to give this movie a 6 out of 10. I don't think I could do multiple viewings of this.