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JUSTIN TANNER REVIEWS TOP GUN: MAVERICK
Any movie with the word ‘Gun’ in the title — especially if it’s followed by a colon — is something I just can’t resist. Add Tom Cruise to the mix and I’m already swooning. Seriously, what could be better than another sweaty, shirtless male-dominated story about American fighter pilots flying around in fancy planes and performing their God-given job of policing the universe? Because what the culture really needs right now is a two-hour-plus military recruitment video disguised as a popcorn movie. Sarcasm aside, “Top Gun: Maverick” is actually more fun than it has any right to be. Especially in its nail-biting final half hour.
But it sure takes its sweet time getting there. The opening shots, filled with sun-drenched military men on the job, a pumping retro rock score and thundering jets revving up their engines, plays awfully close to parody. Though Tony Scott’s 1986 film left room for the possibility of camp and the subversive pleasures of homoeroticism, the reboot doesn’t cotton to any funny stuff: Cruise & company aren’t dicking around; saving the world is serious goddamn business. And they get right down to it, the wheels of the rickety plot thudding lumpenly into place with the artless shorthand of an old fashioned melodrama: “The mean ol’ government’s gonna shutter Maverick’s experimental rocket program unless he proves his new invention can go Mach Ten! What’s he gonna do!?” “Oh no! Here comes grumpy ol’ Admiral Hammer (a DOA Ed Harris) to pull the plug!” Of course Maverick (Tom Cruise), in all his adorable Maverick-ness disobeys orders (huge shock), endangering himself and others (ditto) by performing a perilous self-aggrandizing act under the guise of saving the program. Here the filmmakers unwittingly tip their hand towards not only the hidden theme of the movie — “selfishness is GOOD as along as it looks like selflessness” — but at the unspoken truth about decades of American foreign policy as well. In the hands of an iconoclastic director we might be in store for an exposé about the follies of nation building and military overreach. Instead we have the workmanlike Joseph Kosinski who makes everything in sight feel as leaden and literal as a ball peen hammer to the noggin. In the movie’s stupidest scene, Maverick wanders into a diner in the middle of nowhere after jettisoning from his now-destroyed multi-million dollar jet.
The diner, filled with pasty white extras from “Little House on the Prairie”, turn to the door in synchronized unison to stare gawp-eyed at Maverick, his hair sticking straight up, his face powdered inexplicably with coal dust. It’s a short scene that (in the screening I attended) elicited a huge knowing laugh from the audience (”Boy, those rubes is dumb!”) But the tone is jarringly out of character with anything else in the film. Then, for reasons best left unexplored, Maverick is swiftly rewarded for his expensive disaster by being asked to train some hot, young pilots for a top secret mission to bomb an enemy base. And if you’ve ever seen an action film before you can probably write the rest of the script yourself. A word about this secret mission: The movie goes out of its way to never say who the enemy is or reveal the location of the secret base. There are no flags or signs on the jets or buildings, the pilots all wear masks that completely cover their faces so that even skin color is left a mystery. I understand the desire to not bring world politics or real life nationalities into the plot. History moves fast and last week’s enemy might be this week’s ally. But the result onscreen feels almost laughably vague. Even abject evil is currently generic! The fact that nobody mentions anything at all about who they’re attacking or where they’re flying makes it feel as ephemeral as a video game. The rest is basically a heist movie: Lots of planning, trial and error, ridiculous complications that make no sense, a quickening of the timeline so that everyone goes into panic mode, and the eventual moment where Maverick can step into the spotlight and save the day. Roll credits.
There’s also a credulity-straining subplot where Maverick teaches hotdogging to the son of the man he accidentally killed in the first movie — just so that we can have two hours of “will he forgive him/self?” false stakes — this too is a total time waster. But not to worry: there’s always a cornball setup/payoff moment just around the corner. Each one telegraphed with as much subtlety as a bowling ball falling from the sky. When someone says, “I don’t like that look, Mav,” and Maverick replies, “It’s the only one I got,” you already know the line will make an eleventh hour return, and sure enough it does. Yet somehow, inexplicably, the darn thing actually works. The cast of young hopefuls playing the hotshot pilots, though practically indistinguishable from one another, manage to convey the requisite level of spirited freshness, with Glen Powell’s bland-but-stunning good looks and pert cockiness positioning him as the Cruise ‘heir apparent’. Sure, I’d hoped for more energy from a defiantly one-note John Hamm (as Admiral “Cyclone” Simpson) and it’s too bad Meg Ryan and Kelly McGillis don’t show up to add some sass and energy. But then, like a small miracle, there’s Val Kilmer, who’s onscreen for all of five minutes and easily walks off with the movie. Even with his voice ravaged and facial mobility hindered by a recent battle with cancer, Kilmer manages to convey more sex appeal, pathos and gravity than anyone else in the film. One look in particular — actually more of a glance — that his character Ice Man gives to the pouty Maverick during a heartbreaking scene about redress and absolution, brings a depth of feeling and understanding that immediately tethers this air bubble of a movie to something real. Tom Cruise, on the other hand, remains as aloof and unreachable as ever. A fifty-nine year old child playing dress-up. With the lacquered outer shell of a career politician. It’s too bad he never got a chance to play Ted Bundy. With his easy charm, warm smile and subtle characteristic default undercurrent of bland tepid malevolence, sans even rote empathy, Cruise would be perfect in the role. Except that would be off-brand for him and much too risky. Sure, he likes to court our disfavor by playing snotty brats who swagger hard into unchecked insolence, but he actually wants us to see through the bravado to the hurt little boy underneath who’s simply trying to be understood. Deep down he just wants our love. And he’s even done some fine work in the past: when partnered with a genuinely gifted performer, he invariably comes to life. The best acting of his career was playing opposite a gloriously flirty Vanessa Redgrave in the first “Mission: Impossible” because she was able to cut right through his louche veneer of studied insincerity and pull from him the appearance of actual life — He’s never been sexier. Of course, movie stars don’t have to be great actors. And action films don’t require much profundity. Sometimes you just want to eat a stick of margarine. And the last thirty minutes are actually pretty fantastic, with tightly choreographed stunts, laser sharp editing, rousing music, crunchy sound effects, eye-popping cinematography, breathless ‘boys in a dogfight’ peril, and even a few surprises. So for those who want a joy ride of total nonsense that nonetheless manages to make the heart race (even though it takes all our patience to get to the good stuff) “Top Gun: Maverick” is a not a terrible way to spend 137 minutes in a movie theatre. IN THEATERS
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