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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - T 4 Mins Read

    Top Gun (1986)

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    If you survive the noise, the moronic script, the ego-trip smirking of the actors, and the nauseating sound track, you might just live long enough to discover that beneath the gloss and the beat and the posing for pinups, Top Gun has only one message:

    A bunch of illiterate kids are flying the US government’s $36 million defence planes, and they’re doing it all to rock and roll.

    Top Gun is nothing more than a lot of music videos strung together aimlessly as an expensive excuse to produce a hit album.

    Oh, sure. There’s a lukewarm attempt to tell a cliché riddled story swimming around among the jet blasts and the synthesizers.

    “Top Gun” is the nickname of the fighter-weapons school in San Diego, established by the US Navy to train the top 1% of its fighter pilots.

    The guys have names like Cougar, Maverick, and Goose. You’ve met them all before, in countless fly-boy movies that are far superior to Top Gun.

    topgun_026

    Tom Cruise is Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell – A super-cool pint-sized pilot with so much nerve he can guide another frightened pilot onto the aircraft carrier just by talking. Maverick is a wild card, unpredictable, flying “by the seat of his pants.”

    “I feel the need, the need for speed!” cries Maverick.

    But, in addition to a need for speed, Maverick and his fellow flyboy hunks also seem to have the need for sweaty homoerotic beach volleyball . . .

    At Top Gun school, the fliers are thrust into competition for the big trophy. Maverick breaks the rules, poses risks for the other fliers, and arrogantly seduces his flight instructor, played by Kelly McGillis.

    topgun32

    Naturally, everybody hates him, except the drooling teenage girls in the audience, who don’t know an F-14 from a Colt .45 . . . and don’t much care, as long as Tom Cruise keeps taking his clothes off.

    That’s about it. The rest of the film consists of a series of competitive flying sequences with an assortment of pretty boys in the cockpit who look like models for Calvin Klein underwear, facing different dangerous challenges each time out of the hangar.

    topgun_036When they aren’t blazing through the sky in their F-14s to eardrum-splattering Dolby stereo, they’re visiting the base disco to eardrum-splattering Dolby stereo.

    There are endless lectures on negative-G pushovers and weight ratios, and a great deal of French kissing.

    Finally, the moment of truth . . . When his best friend dies in a mechanical failure, Maverick feels responsible and loses his self-confidence. Will Maverick throw in the gym towel, or go for it?

    There’s never any suspense about which option he’ll choose. The dumb script, by Jim Cash and Jack Epps, telegraphs every emotion and every event before they happen. There’s nothing for the audience to do but sit back and fight off the headaches.

    Top Gun is a subject (and a film) of limited interest and practically no appeal to anyone over fourteen, except collectors of Tom Cruise beefcake calendar centrefolds and gullible teenage boys flocking to San Diego to enlist in flying school, praying their instructor from the Pentagon will look like Kelly McGillis.

    Pete “Maverick” Mitchell
    Tom Cruise
    Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood
    Kelly McGillis
    Tom “Iceman” Kazansky
    Val Kilmer
    Nick “Goose” Bradshaw
    Anthony Edwards
    Commander Mike “Viper” Metcalf
    Tom Skerritt
    Dick “Jester” Wetherly
    Michael Ironside
    Bill “Cougar” Cortell
    John Stockwell
    Henry “Wolfman” Ruth
    Barry Tubb
    Ron “Slider” Kerner
    Rick Rossovich
    Sam “Merlin” Wills
    Tim Robbins
    Evan “Sundown” Gough
    Clarence Gilyard Jr
    Rick “Hollywood” Neven
    Whip Hubley
    Stinger
    James Tolkan
    Carole
    Meg Ryan
    Chipper
    Adrian Pasdar
    Lieutenant Davis
    Randall Brady
    Air Boss Johnson
    Duke Stroud

    Director
    Tony Scott

    Video

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