Great ride into the danger zone again
It couldn't outmaneuver the pandemic enemy that delayed its release for two years, but “Top Gun: Maverick” can't lose, really.
It's a pretty good time, and often a pretty good movie for the nervous blur we're in right now. It's cozy. And it'll be catnip for those eager to watch Tom Cruise flash That Look. “It's the only one I've got,” he says, twice, to on-screen cohorts who are not international movie stars.
What is That Look? It's the half-smile of insubordination when a superior officer (Ed Harris or Jon Hamm this time) busts test pilot and congenital speed-needer Capt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell's chops, ineffectively.
It's The Look that goes with an eternally boyish voice and demeanor. It's those sidelong hesitation glances, right next door to early-career Warren Beatty's. And it's the only look that could possibly correlate to lines barked in Maverick's direction from the 1986 “Top Gun,” the worst/best being: “Son, your ego is writing checks your body can't cash.”
Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. wrote the first one, ripping off every aviation picture they could pop into their VCRs. Half of
“Top Gun: Maverick” is a callback to the `86 original, which was not my kind of summer blockbuster, but it's a free country.
The other half of director Joseph Kosinski's 36-years-later sequel goes in other, reluctantly progressive directions, in a mellower blockbuster key. Now, I want to be clear here. The script of “Top Gun: Maverick” does a surprising amount to keep the movie airborne, even as its dialogue in between bang-up aerial sequences is just as corny and flavorless as the original's. (The “Maverick” screenwriters are Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren