A good Saturday evening, a week before the website’s release. The team is slumped on Kevin’s sofa. Spending their days finishing the Machinistic website, all they want to do is order pizzas and eat them in front of a movie. Yannick wanted to see Taxi for the umpteenth time “because it’s the basis”, Armand would have liked to see 260 Chrono “it’s so cool, they steal Porsches”… But it’s Kevin’s TV, he’s got the remote control in his hand and he’s been talking about buying an ’87 Nascar Nova to go and get the bread for a while… A few clicks on a streaming platform, and Jours de Tonnerre lights up the margherita on the coffee table.
Synopsis:
A self-taught driver who has raced single-seaters, Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) joins a team of stock cars competing in Nascar. But with no technical knowledge, he’ll have to face up to the harsh laws of oval racing. The competition is tough, especially with the star driver, Rowdy, and a complicated car tune-up with a strong-willed chief mechanic, Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall). Pushing the limits, he soon suffers a racing accident, sending him and Rowdy to hospital. There, he falls in love with his doctor, Claire (Nicole Kidman). His love carries him on, and despite a road full of pitfalls, he prepares for the legendary Daytona race…
Team opinion:
Oh! From the very first notes of the soundtrack, accompanied by film grain filtering through saturated images, we’re immediately plunged into the early ’90s.
Jours de Tonnerre (Days of Thunder) will suffer from comparisons with Top Gun, Tony Scott’s first successful film. The script is simplistic, some scenes are clearly caricatures, some dialogues smell of a sixth-grader’s essay: it’s the archetypal recipe for a popular blockbuster.
But it’s so good!
For us car enthusiasts, we’ll love a few scenes. We’re naturally thinking of the Impala manufacturing scene, but also of all the racing scenes where the sounds of the V8 are highlighted.
The presence of some of the Nascar stars of the time, including Richard Petty, will invite you to go and poke around the net to learn more about this strange discipline (going round in circles in mechanical monsters, what an idea…).
Overall: This is a good film to watch with friends, where the little interventions of one or the other will in no way interfere with the understanding of the story.
To watch Jours de Tonnerre legally: Youtube or Prime Video
Technical data :
Original title: Days of Thunder
Directed by Tony Scott
Screenplay: Robert Towne
Music: Hans Zimmer
Lead actors :
– Tom Cruise
– Nicole Kidman
– Robert Duvall
– Randy Quaid
Country of production: United States
Genre: Sports drama
Running time: 108 minutes
Release date: 1990
Bonus: Mozinor’s laugh-out-loud parody HERE
