‘Top Gun: Maverick’ a soaring return flight to action & Tom Cruise’s swagger
MOVIE REVIEW
‘TOP GUN: MAVERICK’
Rated PG-13. At AMC Boston Common, Regal Fenway, AMC South Bay and suburban theaters.
Grade B-
Like its predecessor, “Top Gun: Maverick” is the film equivalent of a Blue Angels fly over. Directed by Joseph Kosinki, whose work on “TRON: Legacy” and “Oblivion” (also with Tom Cruise) did not impress me, the film picks up in the present and is a bit vague about what Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Cruise) has between doing, aside from working on a vintage plane and being the test pilot with the right stuff, if not a top gun, for the Navy.
He’s gotten into trouble for recklessness and a bad attitude, which is why he remains a captain, and he angers Rear Admiral Cole (Ed Harris, whose scowl should be in marble) by flying an experimental jet beyond Mach 10 in scenes reminiscent of, right, “The Right Stuff.” His “punishment” is to be reassigned by old frenemy Iceman (Val Kilmer), now a revered admiral, to teach 12 of the Navy’s best pilots how to survive a virtually impossible-to-survive mission.
These pilots have “call signs” like Hangman, Coyote, Fanboy and Bob. There’s a token woman (a very likable Monica Barbaro) among them. The mission involves uranium and the Iranians.
But the filmmakers, including producers Jerry Bruckheimer, Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie, just lift the climactic mission from “Star Wars.” It’s ridiculously the same. One of Maverick’s big problems, beyond showing these youngsters that he knows more than they do about flying supersonic jets in between mountain canyons and dog fighting, is dealing with the sullen Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), the angry son of “Goose” (Anthony Edwards), Maverick’s doomed wing man in the original film made when Cruise was 23 years old. Bradley holds Maverick responsible for his father’s death. Maverick also knows how to have the face of a 57-year-old man and not a single gray hair.
The Hans Zimmer-like composer Lorne Balfe works the subwoofers just like his metaphoric old man, wearing down your resistance to the chest-bumping Tom Cruise-ery of it all. Balfe saves the softer stuff for scenes with old flame and mother of teenage daughter Penny (Jennifer Connelly), who tends bar on the beach on San Diego’s North Island, where the jukebox plays only “Slow Ride” and its ilk.
One of the film’s antagonists is Vice Admiral “Cyclone” (Jon Hamm, trying to out scowl Harris). Cyclone does not approve of Maverick being a, well, maverick and just “doing” and not “thinking.” This was the macho, frat boy drivel peddled in the original film. We get the same shot of Cruise racing his motorcycle, helmet-free, down a runway as a jet takes off in the background. We even get a shot out of “An Officer and a Gentleman.” “Maverick,” which is dedicated to the original film’s director Tony Scott (“True Romance”), hits all the beats. But it remains to be seen if Lady Gaga’s generic lung-buster “Hold My Hand” will match the original’s Academy Award-winning “Take My Breathe Away.”
“Time is the adversary,” Maverick cautions his students. That’s true for movie stars as well. Scenes with Val Kilmer don’t have the resonance they should. Connelly is terrific. No sign of Kelly McGillis or Meg Ryan (time is the adversary). The flying scenes are both balletic and terrifying. Yes, there will be bare-chested sporting on the beach, Cruise included.
Also stirring and muscular is a phalanx of Navy jet fighters. Just how much the Navy contributed to this film’s making is impossible to say. What does it cost to rent an aircraft carrier? On the other hand, the film is also an advertisement for the Navy (Go, Blue Angels).
“It’s not the plane. It’s the pilot,” is one of the film’s catchphrases. Exactly, I say.
(“Top Gun” contains violence, intense action and profanity.)
from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/x5Et9yv
Post a Comment