Top Gun: Maverick
Charisma overdrive and thrilling aerial gymnastics combine to push Tom Cruise’s latest into supersonic cinema.
The unthinkable: Monica Barbaro
Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell is not just the best – he is the best of the best. And one reason he is, is because he’s never been afraid to bend the rules. It is perhaps ironic, then, that the sequel that enshrines him sticks to the rules so slavishly. As the inaugural credit declares itself a Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer production (Simpson died in 1996), the opening frames unfold the way we hoped they would: the old-school credit sequence, the eye-catching visuals of jets a-scramble and the electronic pulse of the soundtrack. The key is already in the ignition and the engine is ready to rev.
It’s been 36 years since Tony Scott’s Top Gun launched Tom Cruise as a bona fide box-office star, and two of those years the sequel has been stuck in a Covid-induced holding pattern. Tom Cruise, who turns sixty this July, returns as Maverick, as well as producer this time round. Maverick is now referred to as “old man” and “pops” and there are fresh faces to snap at the heels of his glory. But Maverick’s record is a tough one to match – he remains the only US fighter pilot to have shot down three enemy planes in the last forty years. Even so, he is considered a liability by a new regime that has boxes to tick and the old programme is scrapped. As Rear Admiral Chester Cain (Ed Harris) tells Maverick, “the future is coming – and you’re not in it.”
Then, in an unforeseen twist of fate, a military operation is green-lit, requiring the destruction of an unsanctioned uranium enrichment plant in a hostile territory. The mission looks impossible and only the US Navy’s pure elite has a chance of carrying out the task. As one pilot says, “everybody here is the best of the best there is. Who the hell are they going to get to teach us?” Of course, Maverick argues, “I’m not a teacher – I’m a fighter,” but is coerced into accepting the commission. His neck is saved by none other than his old rival ‘Iceman' Kazansky, now a four-star admiral and played in a touching cameo by Val Kilmer with the aid of an electric voice box (following the actor’s battle with throat cancer).
Joseph Kosinski’s Top Gun: Maverick is as predictable as one hopes, genuinely exciting and super-cinematic. It feels more nuanced than the first film, which was little more than a beautifully gift-wrapped B-movie in which the characters spoke in sound bites. The sound bites are still here, but they link up more convincingly. In between the adrenalin rushes, there’s a human dynamic that gives the buttock-clenching aerial stunts a genuine oomph. Above all, though, it is pure eye candy, whether it’s the shot of a supersonic F/A-18 in free fall, Maverick’s frequently unclothed torso or that penetrating, knowing gaze from Jennifer Connelly’s Penny Benjamin, who once shared a life with Maverick. More than anybody else, Ms Connelly bestows the film with class.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powell, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Lewis Pullman, Charles Parnell, Bashir Salahuddin, Monica Barbaro, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Greg Tarzan Davis, Manny Jacinto, Lyliana Wray, Jean Louisa Kelly.
Dir Joseph Kosinski, Pro Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie and David Ellison, Screenplay Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, Ph Claudio Miranda, Pro Des Jeremy Hindle, Ed Eddie Hamilton, Music Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga and Hans Zimmer, Costumes Marlene Stewart, Sound James H. Mather and Al Nelson.
Skydance Media/Don Simpson/Jerry Bruckheimer Films-Paramount Pictures.
131 mins. USA/China. 2022. Rel: 27 May 2022. Cert. 12A.
