Top Gun: Maverick review: Tom Cruise takes his 1986 hit higher

“I don’t like that look, Mav,” says Warrant Officer Bernie “Hondo” Coleman (Bashir Salahuddin) as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) settles into the cockpit of an experimental plane early in Maverick: Top Gun. As in 1986 original Top GunMaverick has decided to ignore orders. Maverick plans to test fly the sleek, black plane on Mach 10. The look Hondo doesn’t like to see in Cruise’s green eyes is one of daring, heedless resolve, and one thousand percent commitment. “It’s the only one I got,” Maverick says.

Cruise is also a victim of this statement. It’s hard to think of another actor who has so relentlessly chiseled away at his onscreen personality over the course of a career until there’s nothing left but a single-minded, single-sided icon.

Cruise was protective of his image but used to be ambitious enough to gain recognition for acting that he was not afraid to take risks. In his 1980s heyday, he had a “no guns, no sequels” rule to force himself to keep moving, and to keep a dramatic impulse at the heart of his work. He worked with such legendary directors as Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, and Steven Spielberg, and challenged his self-image in the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia and Michael Mann’s Collateral. The Oscar that he longed for never arrived.

Cruise saw the future in franchise entertainment and built Mission: Impossible around him as star and producer. It was obvious that sequels were in the works. After Cruise’s spasm of self-parody in Tropic Thunder And Rock of AgesHe stopped trying to understand his character or communicate human qualities that were beyond determination and heroism. He clenches and runs fast in films, jumps off of things, and clenches the jaw. He selects the journeyman directors and controls the productions. He’s more a deluxe modern daredevil than an actor now — a superstar showman who catapults himself into oblivion while a planet looks on and gasps.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

For those of us who miss him bringing his weird magnetism to dicey dramatic roles, it’s a shame. But he’s also gotten very good at what he’s been doing instead. Cruise, as portrayed in Mission: Impossible 2 and 3, is now a rarified kind of high-ticket movie spectacle: he has abandoned craft and opted for no-expense production values to deliver jaw-dropping, practical action and cathartic release. It’s a guaranteed good time at the movies. Maverick: Top GunThis modern Cruise formula is applied to the revival of Cruise’s star-making role in 1986, adding epic nostalgia.

It wasn’t guaranteed to work. Top GunA hyped-up drama sports about naval fighter pilots who are competitive. It was an enormous success and should be considered one of the greatest films ever made. The film’s iconography has been ingrained in pop culture. But it’s also a bizarre cultural relic, a kitschy portal to the vacuous subconscious of 1980s America. Nowadays it’s more notable for its subtexts of sweaty homoeroticism and military propaganda than for its qualities as a film, which, aside from some stunning aviation scenes, are few.

For Cruise’s filmmaking team — including director Joseph Kosinski (Tron: Legacy, OblivionOriginal Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and Cruise’s right-hand man Christopher McQuarrie on script and production duties — retreading this empty-headed hyper-masculine nonsense for a modern audience wasn’t an option. But distancing themselves from it wasn’t, either. Branding is very much the point, to the extent that the opening minutes of the film are an exact, shot-for-shot copy of Tony Scott’s aircraft-carrier montage from the original. The hits keep coming: “Great Balls of Fire” on a bar piano, Cruise riding his Kawasaki bareheaded as a jet screams past, shirtless beach sports, romance in bomber jackets, vintage Porsches, smoldering sunsets, young bucks squaring off, and superior officers chewing Maverick out again and again.

Photo: Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures

It’s a slavish tribute to the first Top Gun. But it’s also a better film, and perhaps more importantly, a much It’s nicerOne: More mature, generous and light-hearted than its older star.

More than 30 years after the action of the first film, Maverick has become a hotshot test pilot, but he’s never been promoted past the rank of captain, and he’s at risk of being left behind in a brave new world of remote warfare. His old rival Iceman (Val Kilmer, who makes a surprisingly moving cameo), now an admiral, summons Maverick back to the Top Gun fighter-pilot training base to school a squadron of young pilots in the skills they’ll need to fly a dangerous mission behind enemy lines. Among those pilots is Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), son of Nick “Goose” Bradshaw, Maverick’s late friend and copilot. Rooster resents Maverick for his father’s death and for stalling Rooster’s Navy career by pulling his flight-school application papers. Maverick, for his part, doesn’t know whether to challenge or coddle the younger man.

These are the bones of a simple, sturdy Hollywood drama, predictable perhaps, but with a heart where the first film didn’t have much more than aggressive striving. By contrast, MaverickIt is very tender. Cruise and Teller have a wonderful, devil-may care rhythm. With a busy supporting cast, the film can take as long as necessary. Glen Powell is the Iceman substitute Hangman. However, Monica Barbaro (and Lewis Pullman) shine as their earnest pilot partners Phoenix and Bob. Yes, his name is Bob. Jon Hamm slyly plays the part of an admiral who does the hard work for elder statesmen Ed Harris, Kilmer and Kilmer. Cruise is unable to see more than one scene because of his poor health.

Image by Paramount Pictures

Jennifer Connelly, as Maverick’s old flame Penny, shoulders the burden of a romantic subplot that’s not only redundant on its own terms, but forced to echo the legendarily mismatched, chemistry-free pairing of Cruise and Kelly McGillis in the first movie. Cruise’s intense desire to eat has been driven inwardly, so he has not found a romantic partner. Cruise is almost the reason Connelly does better than others with Cruise. Relaxed In this movie. He smiles much more in this film than he ever has. Riding his motorbike, flying his plane, playing football with the younger cast members in the surf — he just keeps uncorking his dazzling, weapons-grade grin. Sometimes it seems involuntary, like he’s just having that much fun.

On one level, it’s strange that Cruise has held out against a Top GunSo determinedly, so for so many years. He’s an aviation enthusiast and a skilled pilot. The world is clearly his life. He’s always maintained he was waiting for the right story, but perhaps he was also waiting until he came into his own as an action-movie impresario, and had the clout and the vision as a producer to stage the show he wanted.

The show is truly a barnstormer. It is amazing to see the aerial action, which was shot with real planes. Kosinski lacks Tony Scott’s stylistic eye (though he can crib Scott’s sultry look well enough when he needs to), but he’s a formidable technician and a careful architect. The sheer veracity of the footage, much of it captured by the cast in-cockpit as they physically strain through high-G maneuvers, will — sorry, there’s no other way to put it — take your breath away. The editing is incisive and the compositions are precise. It is hugely impressive in terms of sound design and music, thanks to Hans Zimmer, Harold Faltermeyer and Lady Gaga (with Lorne Balfe as production manager). It’s overwhelming, immersive, thrilling action filmmaking.

Image by Paramount Pictures

The film does eventually turn toward a mission into enemy territory, but the nature of that enemy — the geopolitics of this story in general — is all kept vague. The talk isn’t about political conflict, it’s just about duty, comradeship, and survival. Maverick: Top Gun will be scrutinized for its politics, and rightly so — it’s the offspring of a notorious slice of military propaganda from the height of the unquestioning Reagan era. What place could it possibly have in today’s world, which already looks very different from the world in which it was filmed four years ago?

Watching the film, though, its political dimension doesn’t feel that relevant. It is evident that this film is a cultural and not political work. Kosinski, and others, are engrossed in the fantasies of the original film but try to put it in a caring, inclusive context. They also know, and often refer to it, that the romantic fantasies of brave airmen are about to be replaced by drone warfare. But that doesn’t mean there are no consequences to invoking it.

If there’s something worth salvaging from that era — and from Top Gun — it’s the sense of optimism that used to dominate ’80s action movies. It is a belief that anyone can enjoy the simple, most boring story with enough conviction and skill. Maverick: Top GunThese qualities are plentiful in Tom Cruise. They’re embodied in Tom Cruise, who is the auteur of his own myth, and might be the last true movie star. You will have fun, and Cruise is happy to do so. More than anything, he is determined to get off the ground and never stop moving.

Maverick: Top Gun It will arrive in cinemas May 25.