Ruislip & Eastcote & Northwood Gazette
Rise to the
TOP GUN: MAVERICK (12A) ★★★★★
IN Tony Scott’s fondly remembered Top Gun, Tom Cruise’s rule-breaking pilot felt “the need, the need for speed”. In the longawaited follow-up, Cruise has a new catchphrase: “Don’t think, just do.”
It’s not as memorably cheesy as the 1986 original but it’s good advice for those hoping to be blown away by this year’s best blockbuster.
Don’t engage your thinking gear when confronted by the plot or the fact that Miles Teller’s pilot has inherited an 80s’ tache from his dead dad Goose. Just sit back and let your eyeballs and adrenal glands do the work.
Here, Cruise and his co-stars are flying genuine fighter planes. The gasp-inducing aerial stunts are (mostly) real. There’s a proper mission and a genuine sense of peril. There’s no homoerotic beach volleyball.
This is a rare example of a sequel that is way better than the original.
We catch up with Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell as he’s grounded for zooming into the stratosphere in an experimental jet flying at more than
10 times the speed of sound.
His old
Top Gun classmate, the now
Admiral
Iceman (Val Kilmer), offers him a shot at redemption.
An unnamed dodgy country will bring a nuclear facility online in just three weeks. As cruise missiles apparently aren’t an option (but, weirdly, can be used to destroy a nearby airbase), Maverick is ordered back to the Top Gun academy to prepare 12 young flyers for a hugely risky low-altitude raid. One of them is Teller’s Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw who bears a grudge against his teacher as Maverick’s promise to his dying dad impacted Rooster’s career.
Mav also has to make amends with a conveniently single old flame (Jennifer Connelly) who is now running the Top Gun bar.
Although the human drama is entertaining, the film soars when Cruise takes to the air. The training sequences are thrillingly staged, the finale is unbearably tense, and Cruise’s movie star charisma is dialled way up to 11.
■ In cinemas now