Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Joseph Kosinski
Starring: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Monica Barbaro,
Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer
In Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski's belated sequel to Tony Scott's
era-defining 1986 blockbuster, Ed Harris plays an uptight Navy
admiral who favours replacing manned aircraft with drones. "Your kind
will soon be extinct," he says of Tom Cruise's Pete "Maverick"
Mitchell, now a test pilot. "Maybe so," replies Maverick, "but not
today."
It's hard not to view Top Gun: Maverick as an explicit
statement on Cruise's position in Hollywood. Committed to practical,
in-camera filmmaking, Cruise is the keeper of the flame of a type of
Hollywood filmmaking that once gave us such hold-your-breath moments as
Buster Keaton almost being crushed by a collapsing house and Steve
McQueen jumping a motorbike over a barb wire fence. With the rest of
Hollywood now preferring to stick a bunch of b-grade British and
Australian actors in front of a greenscreen in Bucharest, Cruise
continues to deliver such thrilling moments, reinventing himself in
recent years through the Mission: Impossible franchise as America's
answer to Jackie Chan.
While Cruise doesn't perform any stunts in
Top Gun: Maverick - unless you count a nearly 60-year-old
man outrunning a bunch of twenty-somethings to score a touchdown in an
impromptu game of beach football - it continues his commitment to
practical filmmaking. Yes, the actors really are inside those cockpits,
their bodies being wrecked by forces of nature humans weren't meant to
ever experience. Top Gun: Maverick boasts the best action
sequences you'll see outside of Cruise's other franchise, but it also
understands that other factor that made the original such a hit; it's
got heart, romance, and bags of charm.
Some 35 years after the events of the first movie, Maverick is now a
Navy test pilot. Due to his…well, maverick personality, he's failed to
progress beyond the rank of captain, unlike Val Kilmer's
by-the-book Iceman, who is now an admiral. Maverick is surprised when
Iceman recommends him for the task of training a group of the Navy's
best flyers for what looks like a suicidal mission deep in enemy
territory (it's essentially the assault on the Death Star). Charged with
training 12 of the best of the best and whittling them down to six,
Maverick finds himself reunited with a face from the past - Lieutenant
Bradley "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the bitter son of his
rear, "Goose", who famously perished in the first movie. Rooster blames
Maverick for his father's death, while Maverick is terrified at the
thought of losing two generations of Bradshaws.
As Maverick sets about training this group, using unconventional
methods that rankle his superiors, the movie takes the dynamic of
The Dirty Dozen and flips it on its head. Here we have a
loose cannon in charge of training a dozen rule-obeying squares, and
much of the movie plays like The Bad News Bears with
Cruise in the Walter Matthau role.
While the original was marketed as a romance first (let's not forget it
was a cash-in on the success of An Officer and a Gentleman) and action movie second, the reverse has been the case with this
sequel as we now live in a world where Hollywood only seems to target
14-year-old boys. It's surprising then to find
Top Gun: Maverick is a more romantic movie than its
predecessor. Maverick's love interest here is Jennifer Connelly's
Penny Benjamin, the "admiral's daughter" previously referenced as one of
Maverick's throwaway romantic conquests. Now the proprietor of "The Hard
Deck," a local bar frequented by Top Gun trainees, Penny makes Maverick
confront his love 'em and leave 'em past. As Maverick coyly attempts to
embark on a relationship of substance with Penny, he's aware of the
heartbreak he once caused her. This leads to a subplot that sees Cruise
reveal a side he's kept shut away since the days of
Jerry Maguire, the sensitive, vulnerable romantic lead. In these scenes he reminds
us that he's more than just a stuntman with a million dollar smile –
he's an actor who can tell us so much with a furrowed brow or a look of
uncertainty, and it's remarkable how much humanity he imbues to a
character who is, let's face it, an '80s cliche.
Top Gun: Maverick proudly acknowledges its predecessor,
but unlike the worst of these "legacy sequels" (Halloween;
Jurassic World;
Star Wars: The Force Awakens), it never resorts to any cheap fan service. There are several moments
where you worry an iconic line from the original is about to be repeated
for a cheap laugh, but the movie commendably resists any such
nostalgia-mining. Close to 40 years may have passed since the original,
but Top Gun: Maverick is content to be a sequel in the
traditional sense, picking up the story rather than rehashing it for a
new generation.
A lot has changed since 1986. Original director Tony Scott and producer
Don Simpson have both passed, Kilmer has succumbed to a career-ending
health condition (acknowledged in his cameo here), and most of
Top Gun's supporting cast have aged into obscurity. One constant remains in
the seemingly immortal Cruise.
Top Gun: Maverick occasionally reminds us that Cruise
can't do this sort of thing forever. Someday he'll have to face his
mortality. But not today.
