Pete “maverick” Mitchell is wiser, more introspective, but no less a maverick in the military establishment in which he is still working as a captain 36 years after we met him in Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986), the fighter pilot action flick set in California that made Cruise a household name across the world. The establishment is still the American Navy, and the man he has to take orders from in this confidently rapturous, emotionally evolved sequel, an out-and-out big screen action experience, is a stereotypically severe and by-the-book admiral played by Jon Hamm. The homoerotic undertones that the friendship between Pete and Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky (Val Kilmer) excited critics, fans and Quentin Tarantino in equal measure, is replaced by a testosterone-fuelled camaraderie and brotherhood. Top Gun: Maverick has one woman in the group of elite superfighters that Maverick coaches, and she is a casual acer in a game of beach rugby that Maverick oversees as a team-building exercise.
Cruise is back at Top Gun, the academy that trains a small, select group of fighter pilots in coastal, sunny California, appointed to groom the group for a high-jeopardy mission to bomb an enemy base nestled perilously between two mountains.
So why is Maverick still a captain? Simply because he loves to fly, not just coach to fly—in other words, Tom Cruise has to be in the pilot’s seat for this movies to work. His buddy Kazansky is now an admiral, and Kilmer who plays the ageing Kazansky is a blink-and-miss presence, but even so, the economical script—credited to seven writers including Cruise’s long-time collaborator Christopher McQuarry—that has the right emotional moments at the right time, ensures there’s a moment between the two that enriches Maverick’s character graph by a margin or two. Miles Teller plays Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, son of Pete’s old wingman whose life was lost in that rusty ’80s mission.
The writers steer clear of ageist jokes thankfully, and Maverick’s mellowness is evident only in the way he thinks about courage and responsibility, and not in the way he courts risks up in the air. Speaking to the arrogant hotshots he is appointed to train after they fail a high-stakes training exercise, he asks them to save their sorries for the families of the wingmen they would lose if they don’t whet their killer instincts soon enough.
Director Joseph Kosinski and his writers pose the ageist argument early on, when Captain Pete takes control of an experimental Navy fighter jet and strains to hit Mach10 in defiance of the admiral (Ed Harris) who wants to shut the program down. Ordered to return to base, the soaring hero grits his teeth, reflects on the disaster that diverting funds to drones will unleash on human pilots, and pushes the aircraft so fast it breaks apart at the seams. “The future is coming,” the admiral growls, when Pete confronts him, “and you’re not in it.”
The 2 hours and 17 minutes of the film’s action is spent proving Pete is rightfully in it, extolling the age-old definition of courage as an offshoot of defying the norm but believing in instinct and owning one’s vulnerability. For a commercial film to be this mature about projecting male swagger and yet retain its sexiness is a feat that belongs to Top Gun: Maverick and its protagonist.
Credits for the special effects and visual effects that accent the rip-roaring surface-to-air missile action run into an endless scroll. The cinematography by Claudio Miranda has a high-voltage energy and sweep befitting a Hollywood action spectacle.
Top Gun: Maverick may not have the kinetics and well-orchestrated awe that, say, some of the Mission Impossible or Matrix instalments over the years have had. In some parts of the action, it feels like a deliberately frills-free and fuss-free execution of effects, to achieve just an upgrade in the finesse of an old-time action film. The musical template is to keep the old brio alive. Kenny Loggins’ "Danger Zone" plays out, wringing the 1986 memory out in a jiffy, and the largely rock-and-roll soundtrack, which includes "Let’s Dance" by David Bowie, and also "Bang-A-Gong" by T.Rex and "Taps" by Jacob Anderson, emphasises the peripheral gruffness that imbues middle-aged Pete.
The focus is unequivocally on Tom Cruise the movie star. His Pete reconnects with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly), a woman whose heart he broke a few years ago. She has a teenaged daughter who is protective about her, and her bar by a gorgeous beach is the haunt of the Top Gun recruits. It takes us ’80s children straight back to the tiny, casual sports bar in the original, where Maverick and Goose (Anthony Edwards) play Great Balls of Fire at the piano, and where Carol (Meg Ryan) says the famous line, “Goose, you big stuuuuuud! Take me to bed now or lose me forever!”
Watching Cruise pilot a fighter jet 200 feet above what looks like California’s Death Valley, corkscrew another through jagged mountains and yet deliver possibly the most vulnerable performance of his career is not only heartening but enough proof that Tom Cruise is the last movie-star of his kind in this age, who makes movies like his life depends on it. He is as diminutive in stature, perhaps even a bit more because of advancing age, but the larger-than-life screen presence radiates more confidence than ever before. Unlike the warning from his hard-ass admiral about the intrepid fighter pilot’s irrelevance in a near future that drones will dominate, Cruise proves that he can do it as well if not better and that he is here to stay.
The big screen spectacle is here to stay. As long as you aren’t expecting social commentary or meaning-making gaze on military valour, Top Gun: Maverick is the Hollywood spectacle of this summer worth your time and money.
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