Top Gun (I Love The 80's Edition) DVD Review

Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 08.06.2008

A ride back through the Danger Zone...but is it worth taking?

Directed by: Tony Scott
Written by: Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr.

Starring:
Tom Cruise - Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
Kelly McGillis - Charlie Blackwood
Val Kilmer - Tom "Iceman" Kazansky
Anthony Edwards - Goose
Tom Skerritt - Mike "Viper" Metcalf
Meg Ryan - Carol Bradshaw
Michael Ironside - Jester
John Stockwell - Cougar
Barry Tubb - Wolfman
Rick Rossovich - Slider
Tim Robbins - Merlin
Clarence Gilyard Jr. - Sundown
Whip Hubley - Hollywood
James Tolkan - Tom "Stinger" Jordan
Adrian Pasdar - Chipper
Iain Garrett - Palmer


Domestic Gross: $176,786,701
Worldwide Gross: $353,816,701

DVD Release Date: 8/5/2008
Running Time: 110 minutes



Rated PG

It’s no exaggeration to say that, when the audiences think of 80’s action films, one of the first that comes to nearly everyone’s mind is Top Gun. The film, directed by then-unproven commodity Tony Scott, launched both his career and that of Tom Cruise into the stratosphere. Featuring a high-octane soundtrack and receiving critical acclaim for the action sequences, it was the top money-making film of 1986, garnering $176 million domestically and about the overseas. Perhaps more notable, though, is the effect it had on the home video market, where it shattered records and had a strong contribution to the popularity of the format. It’s appropriate then, perhaps, that it’s had as many DVD releases as it has, from the original in 1998 that was the first real test of some DVD owner’s sound systems, through the oft-repackaged two-disc Special Collector’s Edition in 2004. Yet another version has just made it out on DVD, released by Paramount in a VH-1-esque “I Love the 80’s” Edition.

The Movie

Top Gun stars Tom Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a hot-shot Navy pilot who’s one of the best in the Navy. Along with his flight partner Goose (Edwards), Maverick has a reputation for being great and being a headache for his superior officers. Following one engagement alongside pilot team Cougar (Stockwell) and Merlin (Robbins) with a Russian MiG jet, Maverick and Goose have a rare opportunity to get in close to one of the Soviet jets. The experience leaves Cougar shaken though, and he washes out. This creates an opening, and while their commanding officer (Tolkan) is livid at the hot-shot duo for disobeying an order to help bring Cougar in safe, he informs then that he has no choice…he’s sending them to Top Gun, an elite fighter pilot school. While they’re there, honing their skills under the watchful eyes of trainers Mike “Viper” Metcalf (Skerritt) and Rick 'Jester' Heatherly (Ironside), they have their first encounters with the team of Iceman (Kilmer) and Silder (Rossovich). Maverick and Iceman clearly don’t like each other, and the rivalry starts to build for them as they compete for the position of “Top Gun” and the ability to take whatever assignment they want as a result.

On his first night there, Maverick meets a woman at a bar due to a bet with Goose. While his memorable pick-up attempt crashes and burns, to use his own words, the embarrassment is nothing compared to the next day when he realizes the woman, Charlie Blackwood (McGillis), is a civilian contractor who teaches the pilots in the classroom. The two eventually fall into a tension-filled relationship while Maverick performs well at the school but gets in trouble due to his rebellious tactics, and they struggle to keep their romance on solid ground as everything starts to fall apart.

Top Gun is a film that really epitomizes the action films of the eighties in its macho, balls to the wall attitude, testosterone-driven plot and MTV style. The script, the first by writing team Jack Epps Jr. and Jim Cash (who would go on to write another quintessential eighties movie, Michael J. Fox’s The Secret of My Success), is simple and straight-forward, reflecting the sort of blatant and unapologetic patriotism that you don’t see today but was pervasive during the Reagan era. Most of the characters are fairly one-dimensional, with the exception of Maverick, Iceman, Charlie and Goose, and the storylines that thread their way through the film lack any real sort of subtext or complexity. If you’re looking for a great story, you’re not going to find it here. What you will find are some great fight scenes that still hold up today. As the planes shoot through the sky and target each other, there’s an honest thrill to be watched, something that’s tragically absent today in movies due to the prevalence of CGI Compare this film to duds like 2005’s Stealth or 2006’s Flyboys, and you really see where the art of digital effects, while it certainly has its place, has left these kinds of action scenes feeling neutered.

Of course, this really is the movie that made several of its cast members into real stars, and looking back, you can see why. Tom Cruise had come into audience’s consciousness with The Outsiders and Risky Business, but it wasn’t until Top Gun that his career took off. It’s almost unfortunate in retrospect that this was the film that did so, because he would proceed to get stereotyped as the hot, young cocky prodigy, a role he would try like hell to break out of for years. Perhaps it’s because he does such a great job of embodying the role here, playing Maverick with such a confident swagger that it’s near impossible not to like him. Cruise gives a performance that while like the film is not particularly complex—his emoting in some of the more serious scenes equates to little more looking troubled and giving an intense stare—but manages to charge through the film with an unstoppable charisma. Likewise, Val Kilmer embodies Iceman as the epitome of cool in every sense of the word. Anthony Edwards, in his most notable role pre-ER, provides the more grounded counterpoint to Cruise’s high-flying Maverick, and his is perhaps the best performance in the movie. Watching over it all is Tom Skerritt, lending the kind of fatherly mentor role we tend to see out of the likes of Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey these days. Kelly McGillis provides a counterbalance to the massive levels of testosterone, but even her Charlie is far from the typical female performances of the era. She gives Charlie a hard-nosed, non-nonsense attitude, and she even carries a bit of machismo herself to make her fit in better with the locker-room jock attitude the flyboys exude.

One of the most interesting—and amusing—things about revisiting Top Gun is comparing how well it’s held up over the past twenty-two years. We live in an entirely different world then that of the Cold War bravado that America carried in the mid-eighties, and in watching the film, it’s far more cartoonish then might have been realized upon its release. Whereas the American pilots are instantly recognizable in their cockpits by the open visors and the call signs on their individually-decorated helmets, the Soviet adversaries all wear uniform black, Vader-esque helmets that conceal their identities and fly silently through the night like spooks. Had the film been more overt in the political overtones of its jingoism, this would have been a film that held up far worse. Fortunately, Scott wisely kept the film non-political and focused on the action and the pilots, not the policies that were throwing them against their Stormtrooper-like counterparts in the MiG’s, and so it dates the film far less. As a result, it’s far easier to sit back and enjoy the ride at its Mach 1 pace.

Film Rating: 7.5

The Video

The “I Love the 80’s” edition of Top Gun is presented in the original 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen video, enhanced for 16x9 televisions. It’s a tolerable video transfer that maintains the color hues very nicely. There are no issues with the black levels at all, and all of the scenes come across more-or-less clearly. There are a few issues with grain, mostly in the jet fighter shots, and there’s some little blurring during the inside scenes. These are relatively minor complaints though, and while it may not be up to the standards of current films, it’s a decent transfer for a film from the eighties.

Video Rating: 6.5

The Audio

Top Gun was one of the first DVD’s to come out that really gave sound systems a work-out, with the driven soundtrack and blaring jet engines. The Dolby Digital 5.1 Audio track is nothing less then spectacular. It manages the intense action scenes and the slower dialogue scenes very nicely, with a good amount of leveling that means no need to adjust the volume. The soundtrack is handled with the exact same quality, and it sounds even better when you use the DTS 6.1 track. There is literally nothing that you can complain about with the sound, which is still one of the best of all-time among DVD’s. Subtitle options are English and Spanish

Audio Rating: 10.0

Special Features

The Special Features are a little bit iffier then the movie itself, particularly if you already own the two-disc Special Collector’s Edition from 2004. The reason for this is simple; it quite literally IS the first disc of that set. How obvious do they make this? The disc still even reads “Disc One,” so all Paramount did was put the old disc in a new case. As such, if you have that version, you know all these special features.

Commentary Track with Director Tony Scott, Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, co-writer Jack Epps Jr., Navy Captain Mike Galpin, technical advisor Pete Pettigrew, and Vice Admiral Mike McCabe: This commentary track moves along quite amiably as Scott, Bruckheimer, and the others provide a multitude of details about the film, from the script stage all the way through filming. What’s particularly nice is that, unlike many commentary tracks, this isn’t just a “studio-approved” track where they talk everything up. You hear about Pettigrew’s frustration with the lack of attention his technical suggestions received, and Galpin, Pettigrew and McCabe’s frank discussions about what’s realistic and what isn’t. It’s one of the better commentary tracks I’ve heard, and provides a lot of information about the movie in a very listenable way.

Music Videos: (16:00) We get four music videos, for Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone,” Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”, Loverboy’s “Heaven In Your Eyes”, and the “Top Gun Anthem” by Harold Faltermeyer and Steve Stevens. While the movie holds up pretty well, these…not so much. Granted, for those of us who remember these videos when they first hit MTV, it’s a lot of nostalgic fun. For others, it’s at least another opportunity to laugh at what was considered to be “cool” in the eighties. The songs themselves still hold up well at least; “Danger Zone” is, if not the most timeless song, still a lot of fun, the other two pop songs are a couple of the best eighties pop ballads, and the anthem is a score that—while not as iconic as some—is still highly memorable.

TV Spots: There’s seven television commercials for the flick included, which are fun just to see the difference between the way movies were marketed twenty years ago and now. We’ve come a long way, baby.

In addition, there is a bonus CD included, which features four songs from the eighties—a-ha’s “Take on Me,” Echo & the Bunnymen’s “Lips Like Sugar,” Erasure’s “Chains of Love,” and INXS’s “Need You Tonight.” If you don’t have these songs and ever wanted them, it’s a nice disc…otherwise, kind of pointless.

Special Features Rating: 4.5

The 411: In terms of 1980's action films, Top Gun is one of the more iconic ones, and luckily one that holds up surprisingly well twenty years later. Featuring Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer's star-making turns, thrilling action sequences and an all out, take-no-prisoners pace, it provides a good opportunity to sit back and enjoy the ride. A superb audio transfer and decent video transfer makes the DVD easy to watch, although there's no point in getting this if you own the Two-Disc Special Edition. If you don't, it is worth picking up.

Final Score:  7.0   [ Good ]