Its exactly the kind of spectacle that reminds people why a trip to the cinema beats Netflix “I’m not a teacher,” Maverick insists, “I’m a fighter pilot.” But, of course, he can be both. “Your kind is headed for extinction,” growls Ed Harris’s forward-looking rear admiral (nicknamed the “Drone Ranger”) before admitting through gritted teeth that Maverick has in fact been called back to the Top Gun programme – not to fly, but to teach the “best of the best” how to blow up a uranium enrichment plant at face-melting velocity, a mission that will require not one but “ two consecutive miracles”. He also has the machine-tooled rebellious streak that has prevented him rising above the level of captain – showcased in an opening Mach 10 sequence that doesn’t so much tip its hat to Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff as fly straight past it with a super-smug popcorn-eating grin. Maverick may be testing jets out in the Mojave desert, but he’s still got the jacket, the bike(s), the aviator shades and (most importantly) the “need for speed” that made him a hit back in 1986. A full 36 years (including some Covid-related runway delays) after Tony Scott’s big-screen recruitment advert for US naval aviators became an epoch-defining cinema hit, Tom Cruise is back doing what he does best – flashing his cute/crazy superstar smile and flexing his bizarrely ageless body in an eye-popping blockbuster that, for all its daft macho contrivances, still manages to take your breath away, dammit.įrom the burnished opening shots of planes waltzing off an aircraft carrier to the strains of Kenny Loggins’s Danger Zone, little has changed in the world of Top Gun – least of all Cruise.
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