Top Gun
Director: Tony Scott. Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Tom Skerritt, Anthony Edwards, Rick
Rossovich, Michael Ironside, Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins, Whip Hubley, John Stockwell. Screenplay: Jim Cash and
Jack Epps Jr. (inspired by the article "Top Guns" by Ehud Yonay).
Top Gun, that definitive mid-80s ode to U.S. Navy jet piloting, is precisely the movie that its
cocksure, petulant protagonists would have made about their own exploits. Never have I seen a movie
with such outrageously polished sheen—imagine a sports car with a layer of Armor wax three inches thick.
The whole film throws at us a gallery of The Beautiful People, or rather The Beautiful White People,
of whom only two exist with any real distinction from the others. One is Kelly McGillis's Charlie, a
brilliant aerophysicist and military strategist who gains access to all these jet-set reindeer games by
adopting a masculine nickname and wearing the bulkiest, least comfortable-looking bomber jacket you ever
saw.
I do not mean to suggest that there is a plotline by which McGillis struggles to be allowed onto the
premises of the pilots' training ground; I certainly do not mean to suggest there is any plotline at all.
What I mean is that only by creating a completely awkward and implausible creature—a physicist and aerial
engineer who seems supremely bored by both science and planes, a chameleon who dresses strangely like all
the post-adolescents in her midst—can the filmmakers finnagle a little romantic heat and female skin into
their boys-only FantasyLand. Charlie, and even more so McGillis, is completely incongruous to this world
and this film. But she's there, stuck right in the middle, and there's nothing to be done about her.
The other main figure in Top Gun is, of course, Tom Cruise's Maverick, his teeth as lustrous as the
wings of his plane. It is unfortunate that an actor who gave such a precise, self-aware performance as
the hero of Jerry Maguire will always be primarily associated with this
role. The full extent and meaning of Cruise's character, as in a medieval morality play, is tidily
delivered in his name. Maverick knows no rule, but when he glancingly spies one, he wastes no time in
breaking it. His impetuousity outrages his flight-school instructors, such as Tom Skerritt's Viper, but
they can do little more than wring their hands in the face of his often-alleged instincts and natural
ability. Anthony Edwards's Goose, Cruise's copilot and thus the character who stands to lose the most
from his perpetual recklessness, accepts his partner's disposition and makes no move to calm him down.
Woe is Goose, in what qualifies as the film's big emotional epiphany, but even this scene has a
preternatural aura of gloss, of mishmash patriotic bravado. When Meg Ryan appears as Goose's grieving
widow, she mourns with Maverick in exactly the extravagantly tearful but utterly uncritical fashion that
these arrested adolescents would want of their wives. She glosses over the fact that Maverick's idiotic
abandon killed her husband; she instead uses the occasion to valorize the importance of moving on, of
taking those jets into the sky and doing proud by Goose's memory—maybe with a few fancy 180° spins?
With all that is slick, impersonal, arrogant, and absurd about Top Gun, why doesn't it rankle us
more? Why does it command such energetic allegiance even now, more than a decade after its release, when
the Me-Decade/Cold War glorification of might and flash for their own sake have, at least to some extent,
subsided? I think what pleases us about Top Gun—and I confess to enjoying the film lavishly, in
perfect proportion to my deep ridicule for its form and content—is that the picture is such a perfect
example of what it is. Jet pilots never had it so good, even in the Navy's own advertisements. American
jingoism never went so unquestioned, military capability so celebrated, superficiality so embraced. Films
like Armageddon, though unimaginable without Top Gun as a
predecessor, nevertheless spend the lion's share of their time showcasing their flashy effects and
clanging their loud clangs. Top Gun, by contrast, is less concerned with formal virtuosity than
with the giddy rush of its own pumped-up inanity. It exists with insane, gleeful pride as variations
on a theme of buff, WASPish can-do. Cruise's liaison with McGillis, the many locker-room confrontations,
and the extended beach volleyball sequence at the film's middle serve no plot point but to showcase
hormonal urges, refined pectorals, and groundless self-confidence as some sort of moral good. Jet
piloting is the ultimate gesture not of national defense but of personal style, as if the planes were the
ultimate, unfeminizing fashion accessory. If any doubt remains as to how useless all this showmanship is,
take a look at the climactic battle sequence. To jerry-rig a scenario by which the Top Gun fighters would
play the crucial offensive role, the screenwriters had to invent an utterly spontaneous conflict between
the superpower USA and an unspecified Middle Eastern menace: a major international tiff waged entirely
over the waters of the Indian Ocean. Huh?
Top Gun, a film that at every moment is an ode to surface dazzlery, is able to entertain because of
its insane sense of conviction and the very constancy of its vision. Though ironic readings of this movie
are all but impossible not to make, the slightest hint of irony in the film itself would have sunk it.
The movie constantly allows you to feel smarter than its characters but does not shame you for admiring
their gratuitous displays or for getting off on their own rampaging egos. Top Gun, in its own way,
is a priceless cultural artifact, particularly of the era in which it was produced. It's like the most
perfect velvet painting ever made—sure, it's trash, but it smiles so winningly at its own vapidity that
you're likely to smile, too. Is this just a big ad for aftershave and hair gel? Well, kind of, but
wouldn't we sorta miss aftershave and hair gel if they weren't around? Grade: C
NOTE: After receiving e-mails and other notices of factual errors and objectionable claims in
this review, I supplied an addendum where I attempt to defend (and also emend) the review
you have just finished reading.
- Academy Award Nominations and *Winners:
- Best Film Editing: Chris Lebenzon and Billy Weber
- Best Sound
- *Best Original Song: "Take My Breath Away"
- Best Sound Effects
- Golden Globe Nominations and *Winners:
- Best Original Score: Harold Faltermeyer
- *Best Original Song: "Take My Breath Away"