Top Gun: Maverick soars to heights rarely seen these days in action films

Moving Pictures By Mo Burford

Top Gun: Maverick ( Joseph Kosinski, 2022)

In, Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise is once again a great—scratch that, the best—pilot, and he’s got to save the day by breaking all the rules. Sticking it to his commanding officers (check), doing things his way (check), only riding his motorcycle at high speeds during the golden hour (check). Sure, he’s almost sixty; sure, the film has to do a lot footwork to justify why he’s still only a captain flying missions after all these years. But we’re not here for rules. We’re here to see Tom Cruise fly the very cool, very big, fast planes, and boy does this movie deliver.

With the aid of practical effects—which are becoming less and less commonplace and are, therefore, quite noteworthy—Top Gun: Maverick soars to heights rarely seen these days in action films. 

Thirty-six years (woof!) after the events of the first Top Gun, we find that Pete “Maverick" Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is a test pilot, in an attempt to keep from being grounded, that is, promoted—but don’t worry he’s still breaking all those rules to help out his friends while annoying Ed Harris, who appears only briefly but is, as always, an arresting treasure.

Harris informs him that he is being called back to his old Top Gun academy by Admiral Tom “Ice Man” Kazansky to train an all-star group of Top Gun graduates for a deadly and daring mission. These graduates include Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw (Miles Teller), son of “Goose,” aka Maverick’s old co-pilot who died in the first movie. Maverick must train this group for a nearly impossible mission, while trying find love with Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connoly), avoiding the very 80’s hard-ass commanding officer Beau “Cyclone” Simpson (Jon Hamm), and trying to bond with Rooster and keep him alive. Drama ensues. Also, they definitely play football shirtless—during the golden hour, of course, and in an almost direct copy of the first film’s volleyball scene. It’s completely ludicrous.

As I’ve already mentioned more than once, the movie was filmed almost entirely during the golden hour! (That is, the first hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset, when the sun makes everything aglow with amber light.) I say that to point out something that is both a little silly but which I thought looked pretty great. In some ways, that's my review in a nutshell: a little silly but pretty great. Directed by Joseph Kosinski, with cinematography by Claudio Miranda, the movie is not only awash in golden hues but also in nostalgia. And while I generally find nostalgia to be a toxic impulse, this film managed the nostalgia-laden fan service better than I could have expected. 

That being said, the plot of Top Gun: Maverick is a shoe string so threadbare it will unravel at anything longer than a glance—but I don’t fault it for that! This is a capital “M” Movie, and it wears that on its sleeve proudly. So let us avert our eyes and instead focus on what we’re really here for: the action. And where the movie may fall into cliche and nostalgia with its plotting, the action sequences are, to borrow a well-worn phrase, worth the price of admission.

The flight scenes throughout are intense, engaging and a joy to behold. If there is a significant amount of CGI used in this film, I could hardly spot it. The planes look real. The cockpit shots are incredible. The tension and danger is palpable, and you are on the edge of your seat for much of the movie. The action scenes sing with an electric tension. I struggle to think of better action sequences from the last few years. 

Although I do want to take a second to once again plug Everything Everywhere All At Once, which had amazing fight sequences, and which is coming to Columbia Cinemas starting Friday, June 3rd; as well as Ambulance, a movie I didn’t have a chance to review, which was an amazing straight-ahead action film with car chases that are out of this world and a genuinely unhinged Jake Gyllenhaal!

The Top Gun: Maverick soundtrack, credited to Harold Faultermeyer, Lady Gaga, Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe, is a wonderful pastiche of modern action movie sensibilities with a splash of 80’s synths—not to mention a perfect 80’s-inflected ballad by Lady Gaga herself over the credits—which really lifts certain moments in the film.

I want to say again how exciting those flight sequences were. I think this comes down to the use of practical effects: real planes, real flight footage. The movie was grounded in the materiality of the effect as much as possible, which really does make CGI additions nearly invisible, and allows me as an audience member to feel the true weight and stakes of the danger. Top Gun: Maverick is a little silly on the surface, but at its heart it is about jaw-dropping aerial maneuvers, which left me feeling like a little kid excited to go home and pretend to be a death-defying pilot myself.

★ ★ ★ ★

(four out of five stars) 

Top Gun: Maverick is now showing at Columbia Cinemas and Hood River Cinemas.

Questions, comments, movie suggestions? Email Mo at movingpicturesccc@gmail.com

For more reviews and to see his up-to-date movie log, follow Mo at Letterboxd