TOP GUN (1986)

Country: U.S.A.

Genre(s): Action / War

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise / Anthony Edwards / Kelly McGillis

Plot

Pilot Peter “Maverick” Mitchell is sent to the Navy’s top flight academy, but his loose cannon attitude causes friction with his fellow students and his instructors.  Things become more complicated when he falls for a civilian aeronautics expert who works there.

What I Liked

In some ways, “Top Gun” should have been buried in a time capsule in 1986. For, if I had to pick one single movie to illustrate what passed for mainstream entertainment in 1980s America, I would probably have to pick this one.    From the hit soundtrack featuring Kenny Loggins and Berlin, to the big budget production values, to the mind-numbing simplicity of its plot, the movie is a distillation of what worked in earlier blockbusters into the perfect product.  The filmmakers constructed a movie that is pure dazzle, full of pretty young people, lots of gorgeous sunset photography, and, best of all, aerial combat stunts and effects that surpassed anything previously filmed.

It might sound like the above praise is really not-so-veiled criticism.  Here’s the thing, though; all of it still works to full effect more than a quarter century later.  “Top Gun” remains as potent of a narcotic for the eyeballs as it was all those years ago.  Somehow this very dated movie has aged remarkably well, and that’s no accident.  For the filmmakers certainly knew that watching beautiful movie stars, fantastic action sequences play out against a brainless plot has been the very source of Hollywood’s success since the silent era.  Those things have rarely been done to such technical precision as they were here.

One other observation.  Perhaps the reason this movie’s action sequences still thrill is that they were filmed with real cameras shooting real planes (for the most part) doing real maneuvers and stunts.  There are a lot of benefits to the CGI effects of today, but I wonder if they’ll age as well as the real thing has in the case of “Top Gun.”

What I Didn’t Like

Director Tony Scott used to make commercials, and it shows.  This whole movie is a great commercial for the military, and there’s nothing wrong with that in and of itself.  It’s just that it’s all too perfect.  Nobody’s hair is out of place and their teeth are spotless.  The characters and conflicts are as cliché as they come.  Everything is filmed against either a purple sunset or a clear blue sky.  Even the sex scene is filmed with such blue-tinted precision that eroticism is rendered nonexistent.  Who can really relate to any of that?  Nobody.  Scott’s skills as a commercial filmmaker, though, were used to make us want to be able to relate.  It might have all been farcical escapism, but we can’t help but wish it were true.

Most Memorable Scene

As I said before, nothing even remotely close to the aerial photography and action featured in this movie had been seen in motion pictures before.  Thus these are used to great effect in the opening action scene to hook the audience right away.  We are treated to some popcorn popping eye candy and get introduced to some of the key characters (except for the faceless, voiceless Middle Eastern enemy, of course) in a fun-to-watch dog fight that sets the tone for the rest of the film.

My Rating: 3.5 out of 5