Top Gun: Maverick

Plot:  [imdb]    [photos] Frustrated pilot Captain Maverick Mitchell returns to Top Gun school to train navy fighter pilots for a mission that seems like bombing an underground nuclear site in Iran, but is in some made-up country in the movie. 

Maverick is supposed to be the instructor, but <<SPOILER>> he actually leads the mission himself, because only he is that good. 

Review: This is a simple story that is well-told. So it is fun to watch, and easy to follow. Except for Maverick the characters aren't deep -- but they don't need to be. The mission and the characters are icons that support the purposeful story, and when it gets to the end it is kind-of thrilling. 

The love story with Penny (Jennifer Connelly) round-outs the Maverick character (and shows that Maverick isn't gay.) It is hard to believe that Maverick is in love with Penny or any deep emotions are felt, but Penny reflect the emotions that Maverick feels but under-emotes. 

The real love story is Maverick with flying, and his strong self-identity as a TopGun pilot. Maverick's live-long passion with flying is reinforced by this last mission. In the end, everyone is happy and proud. 

Cast: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller. 

Directed by: Joseph Kosinski

Written by: A committee of five based wrote it based on characters by another two people. 

The Music: The music is part of the movie because you need music with all that airplane flying.

The original music is credited to Harold Faltermeyer, Lady Gaga, Han Zimmer and Lorne Balfe. (Faltermeyer wrote the orchestral music on the original Top Gun.) 

The main title track is great. There are also a number of oldies including Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins and I Ain't Worried by OneRepublic. 

The Visuals: Top quality plane flying visuals. Very good. 

Rating: 3.0 stars: .

 

More: Was this actually a recruiting video for the Navy? Kind of, but the filmmakers paid the US Navy $11000 per hour for weeks of flight time. All navy pilots in the planes -- no civilians.

Even More: Jon Hamm played Admiral Simpson. He created and inhabited an unrecognizably different character from his other roles. 

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