The brutal churn of state-sanctioned violence beyond America’s borders inevitably takes its toll on the people who make up the armed forces. The original Top Gun can be read as comrades coping with intense, dangerous pressure through fierce competition, though it would require overlooking how it is chiefly a (albeit very fun!) piece of American military jingoism. However, even it acknowledges that service is not without sacrifice and that some will inevitably be put in harm’s way for the sake of protecting a nation’s interests.
The death of Lieutenant “Goose” Bradshaw looms large over Top Gun: Maverick, almost as large as the presence of Tom Cruise, as he takes his seat in the cockpit thirty-six years later. Things haven’t gone smoothly for Maverick in the intervening decades, as the thinly veiled Tom Cruise stand-in of a character has had a rough time trying to keep his job as a pilot for the Navy. We find him doing flight tests for a hypersonic jet, the funding for which is about to be cut in favor of drone programs. It’s the most critical question the movie ever posits: when the military has become so efficient with unmanned weaponry, what need does it have for an ace like Maverick?
In the following minutes the movie answers this question, as he is tasked with the training of a crack team of pilots to take out a uranium enrichment facility that only the best, and more importantly, bravest pilots could even hope to reach. The “who?” and “why?” behind this sudden threat to national security are ignored to try and make the story smooth and apolitical—which is perhaps taking the easy way out, though I’m not sure it would have been interesting to see Top Gun: Maverick wrestle with depicting prescient targets of the state department. Besides, this objective almost makes this a heist movie, with each step being intricately laid out and the finale hinging on their talent, training, and luck.
The many actors who make up Maverick’s students are all charming, especially Glen Powell, whose character, Hangman, is a loveable shithead. The biggest star among them, however, is Miles Teller as Rooster, the son of Maverick’s former wingman. He brings the cool charisma his predecessor had, while underscoring it with an anger he lets fuel his will to fly, his trauma feeding back into the machine his father died in.
In addition to the pilots, Jon Hamm leaves a significant mark on the story, his character reflecting Maverick and showing what his path may have been if he kept his head down and rose through the ranks. Also worth noting is Jennifer Connelly who plays a new (yet eerily familiar) love interest for Maverick, who has similarly grown up with the military. She and Cruise have chemistry; however, their on-screen relationship is more focused on Maverick coming to terms with his years spent in service. Val Kilmer’s brief appearance as Iceman also helps to orient Maverick in a world that seems to want him gone.
However, no individual performance here stands taller than the spectacle of real fighter jets streaking across the screen. Their sheer speed and ferocity have never been put on a better display than in Top Gun: Maverick, every scene in the air a constant velocity-charged thrill. Director Joseph Kosinski and cinematographer Claudio Miranda’s strengths have always been in visceral imagery, and their talent is put to incredible effect here. Even before the camera captures actors in cockpits thousands of feet in the air, there is an aircraft carrier deck where crew rush to their positions and planes take off and land in the sunrise. It sets a tone of awe and reverence, and really underscores just how much more erotic the shots focusing on planes are than anything else in this movie.
It all soars. And it really shouldn’t. While Cruise is obviously a massive asset, everything about Top Gun: Maverick feels like it would crash and burn in another movie. Between its faceless enemy threat and its shameless, unnuanced portrayal of the military, it is a true feat that it is able to fit perfectly into the American unconscious—so that no matter what the audience thinks about the material realities depicted in the film, as long as they can see the human story in it, they can come along for the ride. In no other movie this year did my fists clench as hard, did I sink further and further into my seat, enthralled by displays of aeronautic action—the trance only broken when my friend next to me let out an audible exhale when it was all over.
4/5 Stars