#25: TOP GUN MAVERICK

Starring Tom Cruise,  Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm, Glen Powel, Lewis Pullman, Ed Harris and Val Kilmer. Script by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer and Christopher McQuarrie, from a story by Peter Craig and Justin Marks. Directed by Joseph Kosinski. Budget $170 million. Running time 131 minutes.

36 years after the original film, Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is back to lead a new generation of hot shot Top Gun pilots on a suicide 'Hail Mary' mission to take out an illegal secret Uranium enrichment plant deep inside enemy territory. Along the way he's going to reconnect with the son of his old navigator, 'Rooster' (Miles Teller) and prove he's no dinosaur!

Queue a surprising amount of story and character growth before a truly spectacular third act non-stop aerial combat, featuring real footage that'll have you on the edge of your seat, holding your breathe and whooping with delight.

I seriously wasn't expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I've always liked Cruise and nearly all his films, but can't say I'm a fan of the original movie, it's a bit too much American pie for me, too gung-ho and too stylised. I think he's got better as he's got older, and he brings a sense of energy to his films that's very intoxicating.  Anyway, He is the last of his kind, a proper movie star and his films feel like proper events. This new one, TG:M has been a long time coming. Filming originally began in 2018 with a release date of 2020, but Covid had other ideas and so it's taken almost four years to finally get to our screens. In that time, the pundits have been gunning for it, telling tales and whispering that this was going to be a major flop, but boy were they wrong. Garnishing a simply staggering score of 97% on Rotten Tomato, making it the best reviewed film of the year so far, TG:M is a thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining romp, that ditches the jingoistic pomp of the first film and focuses on a gripping and highly likeable story. Even the outrageous third act secondary mission, which should have drawn groans manages to be exhilarating! 

It's a film with quite a lot of heart, with an emotional subplot between Cruise and Connelly, a surprisingly moving sequence between Cruise and Val Kilmer (back as Vice Admiral Iceman), and a some nice friction courtesy of Jon Hamm and Ed Harris. 

Sure there's cliche unbound too, with talk of dinosaurs, shots of American flags, beach football, racing motorbikes, classic muscle cars, slow motion galore and endless footage of jet fighters doing their thang. What makes it so gripping is so much of it is done for real and only goes to make the whole thing so goddam enjoyable!

See it at the biggest screen possible I saw it on screen 12 (the biggest) at my local Cineworld, sat in the second row from the front and left with a nice neck ache and a big grin.

8/10

(post note)
I've now seen this twice, and was pleased to see it still holds up.