It may indeed be Top Gun on the ground, or Top Gun without wings, or Top Gun without guns. But it is also a Crowd Roars or -- closer in every respect -- a Red Line 700 for 1990, just as Top Gun was a Dawn Patrol or a Ceiling Zero for whatever year that was. That's what makes it and its aerial mate so uncommonly disappointing, as distinct from commonly not disappointing because hopeless to begin with. Disappointing, in any event, for the genre specialist who can look with hope toward any movie that might try to uphold the sagging tradition of the Hawksian men-at-work movie. Tony Scott, the director of both these Cruise machines, has tantalizingly picked up the flag laid down by Howard Hawks, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, et al., but to what purpose? To hold it up in front of the sun to see how the light haloes it. To gaze at it in silhouette at sunset. To flip down the dark glasses so as to cast it in amber. He hasn't got the least notion or least interest what the thing stands for. The result, for all its on-the-spot "authenticity, " and with no help from the Cruise dimples, is closer to Hawks's past pursuers than to the front-runner himself; closer to Spinout and to Fireball 500; closer, in case you don't recognize the titles, to vehicles occupied by Elvis Presley and Frankie Avalon. Written by Robert Towne; with Robert Duvall, Nicole Kidman, and Randy Quaid. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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