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- <text id=90TT1873>
- <link 89TT3397>
- <title>
- July 16, 1990: Crash Course
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1990
- July 16, 1990 Twentysomething
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- CINEMA, Page 87
- Crash Course
- </hdr>
- <body>
- <qt>
- <l>DAYS OF THUNDER</l>
- <l>Directed by Tony Scott</l>
- <l>Screenplay by Robert Towne</l>
- </qt>
- <p> Round and round he goes, motor roaring like--oh, all
- right, thunder. Where the unfortunately named Cole Trickle (Tom
- Cruise) will stop, everyone who has ever seen a race-car movie
- knows: slamming into a wall; skidding across the infield;
- ultimately, after the getting of masculine wisdom (hospital
- stays, love affairs, and rivals suffering gloomy, exemplary
- fates are the traditional teaching aids), in victory alley.
- </p>
- <p> The nerve of these people, recycling that story. No, the
- shrewdness of these people. For Days of Thunder offers
- adolescent males the possibility of a high-speed crash almost
- every minute. It offers their dates the possibility of a shy,
- winning Tom Cruise smile on an equal-opportunity basis. The
- boys get some sober, silly chat about the nature of courage.
- The girls get to see one of their sex (Nicole Kidman) play
- doctor with Cruise.
- </p>
- <p> Just to be certain this is the year's perfect school's-out
- movie, it offers something everyone seems to be looking for
- these days: an ideal father figure. He designed Cole's car and
- is his crew chief. His name--another misfortune--is Harry
- Hogge, and he is played by the redoubtable Robert Duvall. Harry
- is, naturally, stern but forgiving, all business on the track,
- a free and playful spirit away from it--as much a fantasy as
- Cruise's neostud. But Duvall finds an odd shyness in Harry; he
- doesn't assert goodness, he just kind of, you know, behaves it.
- Duvall not only grounds his character in reality; he almost
- succeeds in grounding the whole picture in it as well. Anyway,
- he gives those grownups who happen to wander in where they are
- not wanted something to think about.
- </p>
- <p>By Richard Schickel.
- </p>
-
- </body>
- </article>
- </text>
-
-