Film: The loud and injurious

By Anthony Allison

Gentlemen, grab your credit cards. Having turned stock car racing into a vast cash cow, NASCAR zooms into giant-screen theaters this week. And at nearly $10 for 48 minutes of screen time (that's 20 cents per minute, compared with 3 cents a minute for a matinee of LOTR: The Return of the King), NASCAR: The Imax Experience is easily the most expensive entertainment in movieland.

Worse, thanks to the tiresome gimmickry of 3D, you have to wear those ridiculous glasses to watch it. (Hint: The Palms' lightweight polarized specs are much less cumbersome than the Luxor's infrared contraptions.)

All this for a promotional flick that flagrantly, awkwardly plugs principal sponsor AOL for Broadband. Wouldn't you be better to stay home and watch the action on Fox Sports?

Well, not quite. After gushing about "America's largest spectator sport," Kiefer Sutherland's narration, written by Mark Bechtel, packs a wealth of detail, from the 1947 launch, at Daytona Beach, Fla., of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing to the way modern race cars are engineered and meticulously tuned to deploy 800 horsepower at 9,000 rpm as they speed round the track at 180 mph.

Simon Wincer's film shows pit crews refueling and changing tires in 13 seconds, extols the "near-religious passion" of fans and introduces modern star drivers (Jeff Gordon, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt. Jr.) and past legends (Richard Petty, Junior Johnson and NASCAR founding father Bill France). It also details how modern technology lessens the deadly impact of crashes--though it fails to explain why NASCAR's stringent design guidelines failed to save the life of "The Intimidator," Dale Earnhardt.

The only misstep is a cheesy sequence celebrating the sport's redneck roots, with 1940s "bootleggers" (race drivers Jimmie Johnson and Ryan Newman) being chased by "cops" (NASCAR's President Mike Helton and Director of Competition Gary Nelson).

But Wincer (Free Willy, The Young Black Stallion) makes amends with superb footage--including in-car views and a cool aerial shot of an F-16 flyover--that truly delivers some of the visceral, ear-shattering excitement of race day. And that, NASCAR-heads, is almost worth a 10 spot.