The Talkies/Shooting Blanks

...And Maverick is (we keep hearing) the best . He flies, as they say, by the seat of his pants . He's all instinct : "You don't have time to think u p there, " he says, arguing with an instructor at Top Gun...

...Maverick is reprimanded fo r breaking "a major rule of engagement" by going below 10,000 feet...

...Maverick, the film is at pains to con - vince us, is also a wild man in the sack . He's a notorious ladykiller whose pas t victims (the lovable rogue...

...Coincidentally, this also seem s to be Cruise's theory of acting .) But he's also an arrogant showoff...

...We don't believe in the ten - sion that is meant to exist between Maverick and Iceman, or in their requisite end-of-movie conciliation, or in the father-and-son-type bond betwee n Maverick and the top instructor at To p Gun (Tom Skerritt) who, we learn, used to fly with Maverick's old man . It ' s a stunningly inert, uninvolving film—so much so that we don't even feel anything when Goose perishes in a plane accident...

...Teen heartthrob Tom Cruise plays Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell , an ace U.S...

...It's love...

...His performance a s Maverick is downright ludicrous . He stalks through the movie with a board up his back and a macho snarl frozen on his face . The point of the snarl, apparently, is to make him look more lik e a man than a boy, but it backfires : He looks more than ever like an adolescen t playing a grownup in a junior high school show—an adolescent, I might add, who has absolutely no star quality, no charisma, no presence whatsoever, but whose every move demonstrates that he himself believes quite the opposite to be the case...

...cept for the fact that, damn it, he's the best at what he does...

...A great part of the problem, naturally, is that the script (by Jim Cash an d Jack Epps, Jr...

...Nor, alas, is he a very convincin g ladykiller...

...If you think, you're dead...

...is mediocre and th e direction (by Tony Scott) superficial . But the weakest link in the chain i s without question the vaingloriously vapid Tom Cruise...

...Maverick thus becomes the only American pilot ever to engag e a MIG...

...But we don't . We don't, in fact , believe in much of anything in thi s film...

...Here's the funniest line in th e movie—it's Charlie speaking solemnly to Maverick after Goose's death has shattered his self-confidence ( a development which we have to take en - tirely on faith, because Maverick's snar l doesn't waver) : "When I first met you, you were larger than life...

...The hot chick, natural - ly, turns out to be Charlie (Kell y McGillis), his new civilian instructor who's just arrived from Washington, D.C . She's not in the habit of romancing her students, but Maverick's boisterous charm soon wins her over...

...When, soon after his arrival at Top Gun, he spots a hot - looking chick at a crowded bar, h e makes a public spectacle of his interes t in her, grabbing a microphone and crooning "You 've Lost That Lovin g Feeling" at her...

...THE TALKIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SHOOTING BLANKS by Bruce Bawer Every so often, while watching th e current hit Top Gun, I found mysel f fondly remembering An Officer and a Gentleman...

...He's been busted from the rank o f squadron leader three times for hi s "showboating," of which we get a prime sample during the opening sequence : In the course of maneuver s over the Indian Ocean, Maverick meets a Soviet MIG-28 and pulls a Blue Angels-type stunt, buzzing the Russkie, upside down, at a distance of abou t two (yes, two) meters, while his back - seat partner, "Goose" (Anthony Ed - wards), takes a Polaroid of the astonished enemy...

...Navy pilot who has been sent for a course in Air Combat Maneuvering (ACM) to the Navy' s Fighter Weapons School (nickname d "Top Gun") in Miramar, Californi a (nicknamed "Fightertown, USA" ) . Only the top one percent of all Navy pilots are sent to the school, and th e top pilot in each graduating class, a s we learn during the orientation sequence, gets his name added to a rathe r tacky-looking plaque on the classroom wall . Maverick makes it his goal to ge t his name on that plaque...

...I don't like you because you're dangerous," say s his principal competition at Top Gun , the by-the-book Kazansky, nickname d "Iceman" (Val Kilmer), whose every aeronautical move is a "perfect example of a textbook maneuver...

...Or, at least, so we are supposed to believe...

...Now, as movies about th e military go, Officer and a Gentleman was no Grand illusion, but it accomplished quite well what it set ou t to do...

...Later, on their first day at Top Gun, Maverick and Goose buzz the tower, causing an officer to spill coffee on himself (this becomes a runnin g gag...

...Likewise, just before they ge t 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1986...

...nobody can touc h him...

...And she's serious...

...You believed in Richard Gere' s motivation for entering Officer Training School (he wanted, you'll remember, to be a finer specimen of a ma n than his dissolute father), in the dept h of his friendship with his best buddy, in his love for Debra Winger, and in th e relationship—at first hostile, and final - ly mutually respectful—between Gere and sergeant/father figure Loui s Gossett . Of course, the film was a com - pendium of cliches, but it managed t o make them feel fresh . It had sensitivity, humor, and chemistry ; at times i t even seemed to be earnestly—if no t very deeply—engaged with genuin e moral questions . Top Gun covers much the same territory, but with nowhere near as muc h skill or conviction, and with a thoroughgoing lack of moral sense...

...We don't believe in the great brotherly affection that is apparentl y supposed to exist between Maveric k and Goose...

...H e's Movie Hero Cliche #4A—the guy who keeps driving people in charge crazy because he refuse s to play by the rules, and who would have been shown the door years ago ex - Bruce Bawer writes for the New Criterion, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times, and other publications...

...Maverick" is an appropriate nickname for Pete...

...include an admiral's daughter...