TOP GUN: MAVERICK ★★★ ½M, 131 minutes, in theaters on May 26th
According to U.S. Air Force protocols, the long-awaited sequel to Top Gun is timid about the hostile nation’s identity that Tom Cruise and his fellow fighter pilots pointed out during the spectacularly choreographed air climax of the movie.
This has not stopped aviation enthusiasts from speculating. According to the evidence of the snowy landscape and the brand of military hardware on display, they favor Iran, but it doesn’t matter. The triumphalism that drives these bone-shaking engines still comes strong and clear enough to send you eyes wide open and make your movie seat vibrate.
Tom Cruise plays Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in Top Gun.
The only change is in the Cruise itself. His teeth can be as white as ever and writers have not forgotten to include the obligatory scene that makes him run to save his life as to prove once again that short legs can also break speed records. But the smile does not radiate much the degree of self-satisfaction and the air that looks at me is blurred by a faint trace of doubt.
It’s not exactly maturity. In the opening scene, Cruise Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell disobeys orders and takes off on a test flight that ends in a mess, making a big hole in the Air Force budget, but the years that have passed marked a certain sadness behind the bravado. Drone technology has arrived and time is running out. An unimpressed rear admiral, played by Ed Harris, who looks as if his age has reduced him to the bone, doesn’t waste words, “The future is near,” he tells Maverick, “and you’re not there.”
Miles Teller as a rooster, son of Goose, and heir to his sense of fashion. Credit: Paramount
But the service still has one last job for him. They send him back to his old training school to prepare an elite group of young test pilots to undertake the almost impossible. They must destroy the unpunished nuclear power plant of an enemy in the depths of a valley surrounded by mountain peaks. And Maverick must absorb another blow to his ego: he will not fly with his charges. He has been commanded to teach, not to direct.
Once again, egos play a prominent role in the story of the film, which focuses on the nervous relationship between teamwork and competitiveness. In the original, Maverick was worried about his rivalry with Val Kilmer’s “Iceman” Kazansky, whose arrogance coincided with his own.