TOP GUN (1986) ** The military is an interesting subculture, and one that should lend itself well to cinematic treatment. In the BOQs and locker rooms and offices there is often strange, authentic, well considered politics afoot, it's just not allowed to come out in the open (much like the real politics at political conventions is in the side rooms and alleys, while a pageant is presented for tv). There's no question that the military intelligentsia is wrong from time to time, like their civilian counterparts, and with the most disastrous consequences. It's also true that the military braintrust (and so, rank and file) is frequently squeezed between discordant and ill advised, often conflicting, priorities of civilians. The interior military dynamic is probably more fascinating than its rendering through a civilian lens; more consistent, more honourable, more pure. The Kansas City Barbecue (depicted in the film) in San Diego is probably a good place to start checking such things out, so long as you don't act an inquisitive fool. Unfortunately this film has nothing to do with any of that. Instead we get a bunch of characters thinner than cereal box heroes, sloppily plastered across a plot that feels like it's written by a first generation computer prototype. Which is too bad, because Tom Cruise could have passed for daring, Kelly McGillis could have passed for romantic, Tom Skerritt manages to do something even with his few ridiculous lines, and Val Kilmer is very credible as the kid born to go to military school. It helps to know that fighter pilots (like Navy Seals) are given a lot more room than most soldiers, so long as they can deliver. It's a military back alley, one where you're more likely to find the geniuses, possessed, and quasi-sane criminals. The flight footage is incredible (though nearly sacrilegiously cut with a terrible Berlin pop tune---it's questionable as to whether even Pink Floyd could do those scenes justice), it's at least as powerful a commendation of mankind that we can fly around like that as it is an indictment that we mainly want to do it in order to blow up other people better. It also helps that the film was made back in the days when the Russians were scary and had all those incredibly mobile MIGs going, giving the fighter pilots a worthy adversary. I mean, the film would have lost something if they were all sitting around trying to figure out the best way to carpet bomb vegetable markets in Baghdad or Beirut.
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