Tom Cruise is back at what he does best and with some more this time.
Pete Mitchell aka Maverick (Tom) has been in the service for 30 long years. One mistake and he is called at the Top Gun facility back as a punishment. Certainly not. He takes up a task and gets on to it. But this time around it is not just the personal bonds but even the conflicts that have been born out of them between the aim and Pete. What does Pete do in the movie?
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Producer: Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison
Writer: Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, Christopher McQuarrie
Cast Name: Tom Cruise, Jennifer Connelly, Miles Teller, Jon Hamm, Val Kilmer, Glen Powell, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris
Good To Watch: It’s not just action and visually shocking stunts that overpower the narrative, but an emotional story and a touching conflict that manages to grab your attention.
Not Good To Watch: The women in this universe are strong but don’t get enough to do. They support the men and that cannot be the only thing they get to do.
Top Gun: Maverick Movie Review
This is exactly what Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness was supposed to be but went wrong with. It’s Top Gun: ‘MAVERICK’ and thank God it is about Pete and not everything else. All these years the missions of the Top Gun have been above anyone on the team. The cruise was in service and the script looked at him as a backdrop to the mission and not the main conflict itself. Now that he returns to service after 3 decades and the events that led to the death of his closest mate (guys you have all the time to watch the last film, don’t you dare call this a spoiler), he comes in with baggage. We aren’t told that all over again through any kind of flashback, rather an aged but still smoking hot Pete enters the screen doing what he knows best. Making love to an aeroplane.
He can fly his jet even from between two closely stuck poles. What the screenplay written by Christopher McQuarrie, Eric Warren Singer, and Ehren Kruger, excels in is acknowledging the fact that thirty years have passed, technology has advanced and there are more skilled people on the planet. This means there are more who can fly their jets through the worse conditions (at least basic worse). So what makes Maverick The Maverick who can rule them all? His experience and the baggage.
The writers now write Maverick as once a Casanova now a lonely man who lives to test limits, defy the rules of speed, nature and his bosses, and make sure no one else is hurt because of him. He is alone because maybe attachments make him vulnerable, maybe them going away breaks him into tiny pieces. There is regret that he couldn’t save his man and guilt that he walked away. And how this all culminates into a beautiful story is commendable. What isn’t commendable is the script treating the new generation with the level of suspense that even a fresher can tell they are hiding them to make more movies about them.
