`Thunder' Blunder: Cruise Film Is $55 Million Dud

X 1/2 ``Days of Thunder,'' with Tom Cruise, Robert Duvall, Randy Quaid, Nicole Kidman. Directed by Tony Scott, from a script by Robert Towne. Cinerama (in 70-millimeter), Alderwood, Crossroads, Kent, John Danz, Northgate, Seatac Mall, Southcenter, Totem Lake, Midway, Valley and Puget Park drive-ins. ``PG-13'' - Parental guidance advised, due to language, violence.

Before Robert Redford and Kevin Costner connected with them, baseball movies were regarded as box-office poison.

Race-car movies have a worse reputation. Kirk Douglas couldn't lure his fans to ``The Racers.'' Steve McQueen's costly ``Le Mans'' was one of the biggest money losers of the early 1970s. John Frankenheimer's fancy editing and heart-stopping Cinerama photography couldn't save ``Grand Prix.'' Even the best of them, Jonathan Kaplan's ``Heart Like a Wheel,'' failed to attract enough moviegoers to cover its relatively modest costs.

Tom Cruise's box-office appeal may be enough to break the jinx with Tony Scott's ``Days of Thunder,'' their first collaboration since the top box-office hit of 1986, ``Top Gun.'' Premiere magazine has predicted that it will become the No. 1 attraction of the summer, and certainly Paramount Pictures believes enough in Cruise to sink $55 million into the project.

But in spite of the contributions of Robert Towne, who was brought in to rewrite the script and received sole credit for it, the movie itself accomplishes nothing new. ``Grand Prix'' is still more exciting to watch, and ``Heart Like a Wheel'' remains the only movie that even begins to get inside a race-car driver's head.

The original script must have been truly atrocious if Towne's contributions can be considered an improvement. The Oscar-winning screenwriter of ``Chinatown'' has failed to create a compelling story line or a single three-dimensional character, although he does put some surprising dialogue into the mouth of the obligatory love interest.

Cast as a doctor who helps Cruise recover from a race-track accident, Nicole Kidman tells him, ``You are selfish, you are crazy and you're scared,'' then refers to his fellow drivers as ``infantile egomaniacs.''

This lecture arrives after more than an hour of spectacularly irresponsible behavior, both on and off the track - Cruise drives like a drunk on the streets, totaling a rented car and trying to run down a taxi - and you're tempted to applaud.

His character is literally speechless at this point, perhaps because Towne couldn't in all honesty think of a reasonable defense. Yet the filmmakers clearly aren't interested in making an anti-racing movie. The picture owes its existence to Cruise's own infatuation with race cars, so the argument is forgotten and Kidman drops her gripes without explanation.

Too bad, because it's the only forceful idea in this empty, trashy affair. An articulate debate on this point might have generated some much-needed sparks and revealed something about his attraction to racing. Without it, Scott spends his time creating smoky, backlit photographic effects, the supporting actors fill the gaps with quirks and good-ole-boy humor (Robert Duvall talks to the cars he builds), and Cruise ends up playing the least appealing character of his career.

What's there to like about this arrogant guy, who arrives at the race-track trailing dust on a motorcycle, in what is evidently intended as the summer's grand cinematic entrance? When he insults this intelligent lady during a routine physical exam, why does she fall for him? What's the basis for the male bonding between Cruise and his race-track buddies?

Towne and Scott haven't a clue, and Scott doesn't even succeed in turning out a persuasive commercial for racing. Despite the millions wasted on visual and aural effects, a race track is a race track, Daytona is Daytona, and one flaming crash looks much like another.