ENTERTAINMENT

Director Joseph Kosinski brings a visceral feel to the film, somehow making us feel claustrophobic in the wide open sky as pilots swoop and swerve. He wonderfully alternates between loud scenes outside with airplane engines roaring and quiet ones indoors of people almost whispering.

One welcome touch is a new love interest for Maverick. Jennifer Connelly plays a divorced bar owner who has a townhouse, a beach house, a sailboat and a Porsche, so business is good. But she’s also not a push-over for Maverick.

This is a more thoughtful Maverick, more gloomy. The film is in some ways a meditation on what happens to gifted rebels later in life. He is riven by guilt and in one scene he is picked up and unceremoniously tossed out of a bar by the very same hotshots that he was 30 years ago. Worst, he’s called “pops”.

What is remarkable is that Cruise looks to have indeed found a way to thwart time. His chiselled body and still-boyish face are indistinguishable from the pilots three decades his junior during a football game on the beach.

The film handles Maverick’s personal stuff — wooing the barmaid, repairing his relationship with Goose’s kid — while also fulfilling its promise as an action movie. There are jets pulling 10Gs, the metal sound of cockpit sticks being pulled, epic dogfights and the whine of machinery baulking at the demands put on it. The action even takes a few unexpected and thrilling turns. So jump on Maverick’s bike, hug him tight and join him on the highway to the danger zone.