“Top Gun: Maverick” can’t stop looking back
From its opening moments, “Top Gun: Maverick” embarks on a steady climb to dangerously nostalgic altitudes, the sequel to 1986’s beloved “Top Gun” turning and burning through familiar story beats and a seemingly endless number of callbacks.
It jets at a sound barrier-breaking speed, spending too little time on character development and its half-baked romantic subplot.
It pushes well above the limits of believability with an actionfilled climactic stretch too silly to be taken at all seriously.
And, well, the whole thing is just a heck of a lot of fun.
Originally slated for a release in 2019 and seeing years of delays, the movie returns Tom Cruise to the role of Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a one-time star of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, aka Top Gun.
Having lasted all of two months as a Top Gun teacher years ago, he now works as a test pilot who challenges the limits of both his aircraft and his body.
“Talk to me, Goose,” he says during the particularly dangerous, not-exactly-sanctioned and altogether thrilling test we see him conduct in the film’s opening act, during which he repeatedly implores his high-tech craft to “Come on!”
“Goose,” of course, was the call sign of Radar Intercept Officer
Lt. Nick Bradshaw, Mav’s former co-pilot (played by Anthony Edwards, seen here in footage from the first film), whose death decades earlier rocked the previously fearless flier to his core.
After the test flight, Mav is called back to Top Gun, not to be a full-time instructor but to teach a group of top grads what they’ll need to know to execute — and, ideally, survive — a highly diffi
cult and dangerous mission to destroy a uraniumenrichment operation being conducted by a nevernamed foreign adversary.
“Someone’s not coming home from this,” Mav tells his superiors at Top Gun, including Adm. Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm).
Cyclone wants nothing to do with Maverick, but the latter has a friend in a higher-ranking officer, Adm. Tom “Iceman” Kazansky — Maverick’s onetime rival who again is portrayed by Val Kilmer. (And, yes, despite Kilmer’s difficulty speaking due to health issues, the two do share a scene that will tug on the heartstrings of many “Top Gun” fans.)
However, Maverick’s most important relationship in this tale that bears his name is with Goose’s son, Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), one of the ace pilots called back to Top Gun to compete for a spot flying in the mission. For reasons that will be revealed, Maverick isn’t one of Rooster’s favorite people, which means the training will be all kinds of frosty.
That Mav isn’t sure the young man is ready for the level of instinctual piloting he will need to do if he makes the cut only complicates matters.
Working from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks and a screenplay by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher Mcquarrie, director Joseph Kosinski (“Tron: Legacy”) gives “Top Gun: Maverick” a near-breathless pace. It’s been injected with so much fuel, in fact, that we barely get to know most of its characters, namely the other young pilots, such as Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin (Glen Powell, “Hidden Figures”), Lt. Natasha “Phoenix” Trace (Monica Barbaro, “The Good Cop”) and Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd (Lewis Pullman, “Outer Range”). (And you’re correct: “Bob” is a solid call sign.)
We mainly get to watch them be faux shot down by Maverick, as he was by his Top Gun instructors all those years ago — not that watching him routinely out-maneuver them and achieve a target lock isn’t entertaining.
While there is no mention of Kelly Mcgillis’ Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood from “Top Gun,” Mav does get a love interest in a woman we are told also is an old flame, Jennifer Connelly’s Penny Benjamin. The tough but kindhearted single mother of a teen daughter owns a bar frequented by Top Gun pilots and appropriately named The Hard Deck. While this aspect of “Maverick” feels tacked-on, it also doesn’t hamper it in any significant way, and Connelly (“A Beautiful Mind”) is solid in her handful of scenes.
Teller (“The Offer”), meanwhile, may have seemed like an odd choice to portray Goose’s son, but the hair, makeup, costuming and, of course, Teller himself, really sell it. And when Rooster sits down at a piano to belt out a certain song we’ve seen his daddy sing, you’ll be a believer.
To soar, though, “Maverick” needs strong stuff from Cruise, and the star certainly delivers. We get both the Maverick we know — aided by early glimpses of his familiar jacket and motorcycle — but also one older and wiser, if no less daring. Certainly still willing to risk his life, this Mav is, perhaps, more careful with others’.
Speaking of delivering, that’s also what Kosinski — who previously worked with Cruise on 2013’s “Oblivion” — has done. He’s made a movie that, despite myriad little flaws, is sure to please audiences who’ve been yearning for this return to the skies.
And the flight scenes alone may be worth the price of a ticket. They feel like the expected evolution of those from the first film, but that doesn’t make them any less exhilarating.
Yes, the dessert of this meal — the final, logicstretching sequence that will call on Maverick and Rooster to work together — is more than a bit too rich.
Then again, what’s wrong with an indulgence now and then?
“Top Gun: Maverick” may not be the ideal sequel to “Top Gun.” However, given the events of the last few years, it may be the one we need.