1986 action, dir. Tony Scott, Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis;
IMDb /
allmovie. "I don't like you
because you're dangerous." And then they don't kiss.
On December 4, 1959, the United States Navy shut down advanced
pilot training in the belief that air-to-air missiles would soon make
dogfighting obsolete. By 1968, the air-to-air loss rate over Vietnam
had become so lopsided that the Navy restarted the programme, to try
to get its pilots back up to the standard they'd thrown away nearly
ten years earlier. The flyers call it Top Gun.
But this opening is pure manly propaganda film, very much in the style
of the Futurist manifesto. "We want to glorify war — the only cure for
the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the
anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman."
File it alongside Went the Day Well, Triumpg of the Will and
Aleksandr Nevsky.
But oh my goodness the script and the acting. James Tolkan, who played
Principal Strickland in Back to he Future, is basically taking the
same role here, the old authority figure for the young hero to rebel
against. Screw your rules, man. (As I heard from an actual US Naval
aviator, "if he buzzed the tower like that, he'd be out of the Navy
before he landed. If he didn't land pretty damn fast, we'd help him
down.")
But soon enough it's away from the action and time for the smouldering
looks and flirting, This was the star-making role for Val Kilmer after
Top Secret! and Real Genius, and he and Tom spend all their scenes
together exchanging smouldering looks. I'm told that Tony Scott was,
and as far as I know director of photography Jeffrey L. Kimball is,
heterosexual, but the film shows no enthusiasm for Kelly McGillis the
way it does for the young fit horny men. And when she tells Tom that
she's fallen for him he looks confused, like the dog that caught the
car and doesn't know what to do next. (Then the lovemaking scene was
reshot and extended because the company had decided to make Take My
Breath Away a hit single.)
Oh, and the thoroughly implausible reckless flying. Really, gravity is
quite happy to kill you without you giving it a helping hand.
Even with all the help the US Navy gave the film, they'd only supply
two live missile firings, so the footage gets re-used a lot.
"Hit the brakes", no, no, you're giving up energy (whether that takes
the form of speed or altitude) and the other guy can literally fly
rings around you while you're recovering. But this is something I've
talked about before in military fiction: it likes to emphasise the
clever soldier who comes up with a neat idea to defeat the superior
enemy, rather than the guy who gets his logistics right, turns up with
more and better-rested forces, and tends to win in reality.
Daddy Mitchell disappeared in 1965. "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay"
was not written until 1967. That's how much attention the
scriptwriters bothered to pay to accuracy.
NAS Miramar, where the Fighter Weapons School happened at this point,
is right up against the eastern edge of the city of San Diego, and the
training range adjacent to it is further east. So how does the Fatal
Hop manage to go from there all the way west to the ocean, without
anyone noticing the city they're flying over? (Also, restarting after
a flameout and getting out of a flat spin were and are both things
that pilots trained in, and often did successfully, though you
wouldn't know it from the panic shown here.)
I think a lot of the appeal is the macho bullshit, the "I don't care
what you think of me cuz I'm the best and that means I don't have to
play by the rules".) (Insert "dad" wherever it seems appropriate.)
This film was blamed as an influence that led to the Tailhook sexual
assaults of 1991. I saw this in a cinema on first run, so age 17 or
so, which I suspect put me square in the target demographic. But I had
already met macho bullshitters.
In short, this film's ego is writing cheques its body can't cash.
I talk about this film further on Ribbon of
Memes.