Top Gun
If you were a teenage boy in the second half of the
eighties, there was no bigger movie than "Top Gun". This movie incorporated everything
you wanted to experience in a movie and was the golden standard everything was
measured up against. My brother had my mother make him a jacket like the one
Tom Cruise was wearing and we knew the entire soundtrack. What I had forgotten is
how much cheese this movie also is.
Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and Nick “Goose” Bradshaw
(Anthony Edwards) fly F-14 Tomcats from a carrier and are pretty good at it.
Because of that they are sent to the Top Gun school at Miramar to train dogfighting
with the very best.
There is a price at Top Gun for the best pilot and Maverick
is facing tough competition, especially from Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val
Kilmer). Maverick is however going for a different prize as well, the pretty
flight analyst Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). This is all
going pretty well until a training accident kills Goose to devastating effect
on Maverick and Goose’ wife Carole (Meg Ryan in an early role). Will Maverick
recover and save the day? If you are in doubt of the answer to this, you have
not watched enough eighties movies.
The plot of "Top Gun" is one, big eighties cliché. Predictable
from start to finish and with so much cheese you can taste it. The competition
at school, the mysterious father on Maverick’s shoulder, the romance.
Especially the romance. Geez, how did I cope with that back then? My goodness...
The one big draw that makes “Top Gun” worth watching even
today is the flight scenes. The F-14s are VERY cool and they make you want to
be a pilot sooo bad. Not only does the movie give them a lot of time, but the
flight scenes are also some of the best ever filmed. I normally consider car
chases or flight combat filler in a movie. Something that must be in an action
movie, but for my sake can be done with as quickly as possible. Not so in “Top
Gun”. They are exhilarating, tense and liberating. They are macho power and
cat-like elegance, testosterone on afterburner. I read that the recruitment
offices for fighter pilots were stormed after the movie came out and I understand
why. I feel... elated watching these machines fly.
The testosterone is flowing freely all through the movie,
whether it is the banter, the volleyball game, Cruise’ motorcycle or his
courtship. Women in this movie are essentially reduced to admire these he-men.
In the eighties I thought that was pretty cool. Watching it again, it is unintentionally
comical and I had a few good laughs. A lot, actually.
Luckily the wrapping is first class. The cinematography does
all it can to emphasize the heroism with sunset shots and power framing, not
only of the planes but also the characters. It is a shame it was “wasted” on so
poor a plot and script, but it does make it easier to swallow when everything looks
so good.
The soundtrack in another strong asset of “Top Gun”.
Practically every tune of the movie found its way into pop culture, whether it
is Faltermeyer’s motifs or Berlin’s “Take my Breath Away”. Maybe dated music
today, but you hear a few seconds of these tunes and you are right back in the eighties.
As a movie, “Top Gun” has not aged well, but as an
exposition on fighter planes it is unrivalled and like the Tomcats, it stands
as a proud monument to the eighties, cheese and all.
I say this not as a negative judgment but as a statement of fact--I have seen movies like Cruising that literally include frames of gay pornography. I have seen Brokeback Mountain and any number of other gay romances. And despite this, the shirtless volleyball scene accompanied by Kenny Loggins singing "Playing with the Boys" is the gayest thing I have ever seen on film.
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with that, of course, but the fact that the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of accepting gay folks in the military as long as they didn't admit it was started a couple of years after Top Gun is true for a reason.