Top Gun (1986)

So, like, what the hell? This film is a film that always crops up in lists of best films, favourite films, important films etc. But That's a joke right? Right? Apparently not. This is a Tony Scott film, the same Tony Scott who made the amazing 'True Romance', but I guess also the same Tony Scott who made Deja Vu & Domino. This is a big 80s film, it's got power ballads, Tom Cruise before he had his teeth fixed, Val Kilmer and Dr Mark Green from ER (Anthony Edwards). It's got lots of shots of aeroplanes and a love interest with big blonde hair.

Top Gun is the story of Maverick (Cruise) who despite his reckless (or Maverick) attitude toward being a Navy Pilot is also a great pilot, so he graduates to the Top Gun programme, an American programme to train fighter pilots in the skills of mid air combat; dog fights. Here you get the best of the best (or at the very lease the most arrogant) pilots who must compete with each other to take home the trophy Top Gun and get the chance to teach themselves. There's also a tacked on love story where Tom Cruise meets a woman in the bar who happens to be an instructor of his, and some back story involving his dad.

The first problem with the film, a problem which is evident right at the start and then throughout the rest of the film, is that aeroplanes all look kinda similar. So you get these lovely shots of aeroplanes diving in and out of each other, chasing each other, one pursuing the next, and to be quite honest you feel no sense of danger as you have no real clue who is chasing who. This gets worse as every shot you ever see of Tom Cruise he seems to have that shit eating grin on his face, very cocky. But even when you take that out of the equation the film falls behind in a number of other ways too.

• The characters aren't really fleshed out. Edwards whole character development involves his habit of taking polaroids, and that he has a wife and child, whereas Cruise clings to the back story of his dad because it is the only thing that makes his character even remotely interesting.
• None of these people are really that nice, they're frat boys. The closest you get to liking a character is Anthony Edwards, that may just have been the fact I really liked him in ER, or it could be because unlike the others he didn't spend his entire time with a grin on his face and topless.
• It is constantly brought to our attention that Maverick is a reckless, dangerous pilot, and yet he continues to be allowed to fly. He constantly disobeys orders, flies too close to the towers and generally puts other people in danger. Yet somehow he is allowed not only to remain a pilot but also advance on to the Top Gun Academy.
• The whole film is a cheesy mess. I mean, the 80s was filled with cheesy films, some of them are incredibly charming. The Sure thing for example is really quite cheesy, but it has a bucket load of heart and is therefore a great film. This film does not.

Basically the film, had it not starred one of the biggest stars in the world, would probably have been forgotten into the annals of film history. It's a curio for Tony Scott fans, it is not a classic. I get the impression that you had to watch it at a certain time in your life, or simply have been alive when it was released, but as I was not, and am watching it at presumably the wrong time, I was left wondering what all the fuss was about, because power ballads, a topless arrogant man don't really do it for me in films.