| Paramont Pictures, 1986 | Runtime: 110 minutes | Rated PG |
| Starring: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Michael Ironside | ||
| Written by Jim Cash & Jack Epps, Jr. | Directed by Tony Scott. | |
How movies like "Top Gun" (1986) ever get made will forever be beyond me. I will never understand how the makers of a film so incomprehensibly bad can possibly want to put out this garbage. Those who worship it do so only for its aerial scenes. Did they simply fast-forward through the parts where people actually tried to talk to each other (I wanted to fast-forward through about 110 minutes of this film)?
The plot (for lack of a better word) involves a bunch of macho pilots at the Top Gun Naval Flying School. One of these pilots is Maverick (Tom Cruise). Maverick has trouble following the rules at the school. He is at times taunted by the other pilots, who include Val Kilmer, in a horrifyingly bad acting job--not surprising, since he only did this film because of contractual obligation
Maverick soon starts to fall for Charlie (Kelly McGillis), a civilian instructor at Top Gun. Or does she fall for him first? Who cares? This film is much too dumb to understand a real human relationship, anyway. The dialogue during Cruise and McGillis' scenes together is so bad that you wonder how it took TWO people to write the screenplay. I can't figure it out. Maybe they're multiple personalities, but you'd still figure that at least one of the personalities was somewhat interesting, wouldn't you?
And then we have the dogfight scenes between the American and Libyan jets. These scenes were certainly well-done for the time, but they don't even begin to excuse the terrible writing in the rest of the scenes. This is no surprise since the film was co-produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, who just loves films that have much better visuals than they do scripts, such as "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor."
One thing that really killed me about "Top Gun" was the way the capabilities of its actors were so underestimated by director Tony Scott. This movie is so far below them that they should all be ashamed to have this on their resumes. Tom Cruise has become one of the best actors of the past fifteen years, starring in exceptional films such as "Born on the Fourth of July," "Jerry Maguire," and "Magnolia," for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Meg Ryan has also proven herself with roles in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "When Harry Met Sally. . .", one of the best romantic comedies ever made. Anthony Edwards went on to success as the star of the long-running NBC program, "ER." And, of course, Val Kilmer, who didn't want to do it in the first place (and who could blame him?), went on to much better films, including "Heat," "True Romance," and "Tombstone," in which he played an untouchable Doc Holliday.
To those who worship "Top Gun," I recommend seeing any one of the films (well, television program, in the case of Anthony Edwards) I've listed above and comparing the performances of the actors with those of the same ones in "Top Gun." If you don't find the performances in "Top Gun" bland, soulless, and boring, than you haven't seen enough movies. "Top Gun" is a complete dead zone of cinema.
Note: Fans of "Top Gun" may want to check out the Academy Award-winning film "The Right Stuff" from 1983, the story of how Americans got into space. It includes scenes of Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier as well as the first astronauts being sent up. Just thought you might want to check out the movie that "Top Gun" wished it could have been.
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