Great Film: Top Gun
And all the Air Force got was "Iron Eagle" .....
If there's ever proof of the cachet of Naval Aviation, this is it. Those
poor Air Force guys got a trio of "Iron Eagle" flicks that went from bad
to
horrible, whereas the Navy flyboys got this great 1980's classic. Sure,
it's
cheesy and corny, but it makes the cheese and corn taste pretty damn good.
A
cynic might argue that it's just a two hour long Navy recruiting ad (one
that worked for me, two years later I found my ass in Pensacola sweating
through AOCS, short for Aviation Officer Candidate School, the program
immortalized in "An Officer and a Gentleman") but by making a pro-Navy
movie, the filmmakers also got invaluable technical assistance from top
Navy
aviators, and it shows.
For starters, although this movie takes numerous liberties in order to
entertain, the basic setup, in which fighter pilots from the fleet get
sent
to NAS Miramar, aka, "Top Gun" for intensive training, is 100% accurate.
The
Navy, back during Vietnam, was getting sick of losing too many pilots in
air-to-air combat. The problem, they discovered, was their fighter jocks
had
been trained for purely long-range missile interceptions, meaning they'd
lost their dogfighting skills. And, in Vietnam, several American planes
were
accidentally shot down by their own side by missiles, so, as a safety
factor, enemy planes had to be visually identified, meaning American
pilots
were back to engaging the enemy at short range, hence the need for
dogfighting. The "Top Gun" school was started as a result, and the rest is
history.
Now, back to the movie. Tom Cruise is Maverick, a hotshot pilot but also
somewhat unstable. If "Risky Business" launched his career as a movie
star,
then "Top Gun" cemented it. Guys wanted to be like him, and women of
course
lusted after him. The plot is pure formula, but executed with consummate
professionalism. The team who put this movie together knew exactly how to
push all the right buttons. But the crème de la crème is surely the
flying.
I don't think that any movie, before or since, has ever rendered air
combat
in a more convincing and dramatic fashion. For nearly 100 years fighter
pilots have been the modern equivalent of olden knights, men who brought a
sense of glamour and romance to the deadly art of war, and this movie
gives
them a fitting tribute.
8/10
Cast
- Carole played by Meg Ryan
- Ice played by Val Kilmer
- Merlin played by Tim Robbins
- Stinger played by James Tolkan
- Maverick played by Tom Cruise
- Chipper played by Adrian Pasdar
- Sundown played by Clarence Gilyard Jr.
