Top Gun is indeed a Maverick

Rating: 4/5

Starring: Tom Cruise’ Ed Harris and others

So… What does Tom Cruise bring to the platter?

Good old word charm, a story that has a past, a present that is tense and not quite under control and a swagger that can only visit personalities like Ethan Hunt and Top Gum Maverick.

So when it is Tommy boy, the good old Tommy Boy, you go to the cinemas rest assured that the frenzy of modern action films will not assault your senses, that there will indeed be a story, an underlying emotional quotient that is human and an unsaid understated romance which kindles up the past and the present and maybe the future.

In Top Gun 2 Maverick, it’s the balance of all the above that ably offsets the predictability.

Cruise who as producer and actor debuted the film at Cannes lives up to the standing ovation he got there.
Yes he is vintage, a Navy veteran who is captain when he could have been an air admiral with two stars, and yes it is all about him being viewed as a teacher instead of a mission head.

But then it’s Cruise so he has to be in the middle of it all. In Top Gun 2, he gets into a dangerous mission to fly into enemy territory, destroy an illegal uranium base, fly dangerously low to avoid the radars and hit the target to return back with a vertical climb that is gravitationally skull breaking and do all this in just 2.15 minutes.

Of course the deeper end is to deal with a past where he lost his wingman and is now confronted with another one … the lost wingman’s son.

The film which also feasts on the bod of the maverick to draw the oohs and aahs with a beach rugby match is otherwise engaging too. Needless to say, the production values are high, the editing slick and the air action extremely windy.

What more would you want if you have grown alongside Cruise and his singularly languorous action mounts.