Movie Review by Bill Rendall

Top Gun

The plot is riddled with movie clichés. Jingoism is rampant, which is probably a reflection of the Reagan era. The romance between Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis is unconvincing. Yet, despite its flaws, Top Gun is one of my favourite movies. I consider it to be a good-bad movie.

The aerial shots are certainly a good feature of Top Gun. The soundtrack is good too, albeit in the synthetic style of the eighties. The Giorgio Moroder composition 'Take My Breath Away' won an Oscar for the best movie song. The movie serves as a promo for the song and vice versa.

Top Gun is essentially a glossy commercial and proved to be a very effective recruiting vehicle for the Navy. It is a movie that you can start and stop watching at any point and still enjoy.

There is no character development over the course of the movie, although the Cruise character goes from cocky to shaken to cocky again. Many of the characters have nicknames that sum them up in a word, such as Maverick and Iceman.

It should come as no surprise that Tony Scott, the director of Top Gun, got the gig on the strength of a Saab commercial he made which demonstrated that he could film airplanes. Incidentally, Tony Scott's brother Ridley also made commercials before getting into feature length movies. The Top Gun production team, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, also had an advertising and marketing background.

One of the memorable scenes of the movie is Cruise's corny attempt to woo McGillis with his rendition of 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling.' It is as comical as the scene from Risky Business where Cruise sings 'Old Time Rock and Roll' in his underpants.

Meg Ryan makes a brief but memorable appearance. She has more chemistry with Cruise than McGillis does. Perhaps too much chemistry considering she is playing the wife of Cruise's best friend and co-pilot (Anthony Edwards). Sadly her presence telegraphs Edwards' imminent death. Showing us that he is a family man with so much to live for is a setup for a poignant tragedy.

The script was developed from a magazine article. Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr were credited as the screenwriters but there were others with a finger in the pie, including Cruise. The result is a pastiche of a story.

If a movie is driven by a strong story my enjoyment of it on subsequent viewings is likely to be diminished by knowing what is going to happen. This does not apply to Top Gun. The movie is best experienced in a cinema with a big screen and a big sound system. Leave your brain at the door and just enjoy the look and feel of the movie.

Director: Tony Scott

Screenplay: Jim Cash, Jack Epps Jr.

Music: Harold Faltermeyer 

Further viewing:

Anyone who takes the macho posturing of Top Gun seriously should hear what Quentin Tarantino has to say about it in Sleep With Me, a talky, low budget art house movie which is the antithesis of Top Gun.

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