Quick and Dirty Review of “Top Gun: Maverick”
“Top Gun: Maverick” is a throw-back, popcorn-crunching “Summer Movie” like we rarely get any more. I doubt it will win Best Picture, but it’s got my vote for the most entertaining movie of the year. It’s chock full of action scenes, fun characters, and great moments that will have you jumping out of your chair — or jumping up and down on your couch.
Tom Cruise is excellent here, embodying the whole “movie star” concept just by walking onto the screen and giving us a smile. Here, his aging fighter pilot persona comes up against the one enemy he can’t fight—retirement. Whether it’s his flyboy attitude or the idea that most fighter jets will soon be replaced with remotely-piloted drones, Maverick’s days are numbered.
But before he’s pushed out of the military, they’ve got one more job for him: train a bunch of young kids to carry out a deadly, nearly-impossible bombing mission in some foreign land — and the filmmakers go to great pains to never mention the name of the country being bombed or even hint at the general region where the country might be located. Can Maverick whip these flyboys AND flygirls into shape? Oh, and did I forget to mention one of them is the son of Goose, Maverick’s old flying partner who died in the first film?
The action scenes are stunning in their realism — mostly because they are real. Tom Cruise apparently insisted that as much of the flying be as real as possible, so that’s really the actors up in fighter jets, flying along with military pilots. It’s all exhilarating and exhausting and awesome. 8 out of 10, one of the best films of the year.
