Top Gun: Maverick is of course custom-made to scratch the international itch for big-budget, star-driven action movies—the kind that look cool with Tom Cruise snugged down in their cockpit. It's a better film than the first Top Gun, released 36 years ago this month, and much credit for that must go to new director Joseph Kosinski, who previously helmed Oblivion, another Cruise vehicle. Kosinski surpasses the late Tony Scott as a ringmaster of airborne acrobatics (note the shot of two jets flying in tandem across the screen when they're suddenly spun apart by a third jet blasting up between them from below). He also wields IMAX and Dolby Atmos technology with thunderous gusto, which is exactly what we want when the time arrives for a fighter jet to come screaming into view and fly sideways under a bridge.
The story? Well, Cruise is back as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell—an officer who is still fighting off promotion to a higher rank because it would tear him away from the only thing he loves in life, which is being up in the air. Pete's actually not so much of a maverick now, having quit the mission-flying grind to become an instructor at the Navy's San Diego flight-training school, called TOPGUN. But despite his abundant energy and appealing twinkle, he still manages to annoy some key superiors—men with call names like "Cyclone'' (Jon Hamm) and "Hammer" (Ed Harris). (You walk out of this movie feeling a sudden need for a fun radio handle of your own.)
