BEFORE: I've done baseball chains before, and a football chain, even a boxing chain. But this time subjects are going to be more of a free-for-all, bouncing from one sport to another. First I figured I'd go from baseball to football to basketball and then catch the rest, but that didn't really work. I wanted to hit some key calendar events coming up. Then I figured the most logical choice after "For Love of the Game" would be "Tin Cup", another Costner film, but I don't have a copy of that. AMC is running it this week, but with commercials, and I've taken a stand against that. So today I tore the chain apart and rebuilt it, with an eye on linking actors between films. It's still organized by sport, and I'll still hit some benchmarks, so that all will work for me. As a result, John C. Reilly carries over from last night's film.
THE PLOT: A young hot-shot stock car driver gets his chance to compete at the top level.
AFTER: For my job, I record a lot of sports that I fast-forward through, especially key events like the U.S. Opens (golf and tennis), NBA playoffs, Stanley Cup, etc. I track the commercials, so the Super Bowl is kind of like my Super Bowl, but in a different way. I don't tape a lot of auto racing, because they tend to run commercials in a split-screen with the race, which is fine by be, because if I had to watch a whole NASCAR race, I'd probably want to shoot myself.
But no worries here, this movie edits the races down to their key moments, keeping only the most exciting bits, including the crashes, but still the actions are hyper-realized, the rivalries are forced. Two cars "trading paint" is ALWAYS seen here as a personal vendetta, but I have a feeling that such things tend to happen on the track in a more accidental way. Bumping another racecar is probably like throwing a baseball at a batter's head - sure it happens, but the league probably frowns on it, and it only leads to worse things.
Crashes are WHY people watch NASCAR, right? George Carlin famously called auto racing "almost a sport", because there is the chance of serious injury. (But ultimately he ruled against it, because the only three real sports are baseball, basketball and football. Everything else is a game or activity, like darts, or driving a car). To quote the man: "Hey, where else besides auto racing am I going to see a 23-car collision and not be IN the son of a bitch?" No one wants to see anyone die, but everyone still wants to see crashes. So the movie delivers, by putting Cruise's character in jeopardy, but allowing him to recover in true Hollywood fashion.
What better way to introduce the love interest, Nicole Kidman, as a brain surgeon. (Yes, you read that correctly.) She's an American brain surgeon with an Australian accent and a Polish last name, go figure. And she ignores every rule about doctor-patient relationships by getting into bed with Cruise's character - well, she does need to judge his motor skills to see if he can race again. But, once he invites her to watch him race, we never see her back in a hospital. I mean, come on, what's more important, performing life-saving brain operations or satisfying the sexual needs of an egotistical racecar driver? Wait a minute...
And I know it's hard to come up with fictional character names, but the main character is named Cole Trickle? It sounds like run-off from the processing plant. It also sounds weak when compared to real driver names - manly-man names like Kyle Busch, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne and Juan Pablo Montoya. It just doesn't hold up.
There are a lot of things I don't understand about auto racing (and sports in general, for that matter), for example, how do they know which car is in first place, when they're constantly taking those pit stops? If the car in first place goes into the pit, doesn't it get passed by other cars while it's there? I've had people try to explain this to me before, and it just makes my eyes glaze over and my head hurt. I assume they use computers now to track each car's position and number of laps, but how the heck did they do it back in the old days?
The bottom line - occasionally exciting, but mostly ridiculous. Just like NASCAR itself.
Starring Tom Cruise (last seen in "The Color of Money"), Nicole Kidman (last seen in "The Hours"), Randy Quaid (last seen in "Freaked"), Cary Elwes (last seen in "Liar Liar"), Michael Rooker (last seen in "Super"), Fred Dalton Thompson (last seen in "Thunderheart").
RATING: 4 out of 10 checkered flags
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