Went to the movies today with a friend to go see the currently playing replay of “Top Gun” in the IMAX theater, in Riverside, 3D glasses required, no less. The movie’s main stars are Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, and Kelly McGillis as the love interest. Tom Cruise plays as Maverick, a kind of arrogant, slightly wild Navy fighter pilot, with Val Kilmer playing “Ice”, more of a Straight-laced by the books fighter pilot. The plot of the film involves them training to pilot these aircraft and everyone in the “Top Gun” program is the top one percent of the Navy pilot class. During one of the training exercises, Maverick and his co-pilot “Goose” lose control of their aircraft and have to eject. Goose did not survive the ejection. The scenes that followed were extremely emotional (more so for me having lost a close relative just three days ago). The emotional scenes played by Tom Cruise were very believable and very well acted, he made me believe he just lost someone very close to him. Not only did he lose his friend but he also lost some of his cocky flight confidence, setting up for the triumphant comeback at the end.
I forgot to mention how young all the actors in the film are, being that it was filmed 26 years ago, and also how 80s cheesy the film is. Part of the reason for some of the cheesiness is the 80s soundtrack, “Danger Zone”, “Take My Breath Away”, and “You Lost that Loving Feeling”, the last of which was sung by Cruise himself, trying to pick up his love interest. Also, there were some iconic 80s sayings that I believe originated from this film including, “you can be my wingman anytime”‘ and “I feel the need for speed”. The 3D aspect of the film was completely unnecessary, didn’t add anything, but didn’t distract either. The film didn’t look remastered like they often do with Blu-ray discs. The scenery to me lacked HD quality resolution.
In all, I think at that time, this was Tom Cruise’s best film and certainly helped to further catapult him into the superstar that he is today. It was enjoyable to re-watch and I would give it 3.5 stars.
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