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Though aviator sunglasses and beach volleyball have rarely been so beautifully photographed onscreen, there’s precisely little to compliment about Top Gun (1986). Before getting acquainted with it a couple years ago, I figured it at worst would have the same overriding problem of, say, an Esther Williams vehicle — boring on land but exciting in the water — just with MGM swimming pools traded for wide-open skies sliced through by the dart-like planes steered by the title program’s cocksure young pilots.

But take away the luster of Tony Scott’s forceful, hyper-aestheticized naval-chic images — Top Gun is maybe the most ravishingly shot military propaganda ever made — it’s shockingly tedious, with supplemental action sequences so spatially confusing they can’t get your heart racing. They mostly play like slideshows. Everything is tethered to a lifelessly written story about an arrogant-but-talented 20-something pilot, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise), with a lot of growing up to do; he’s eventually somewhat tamed by a freakish brush with personal tragedy and a romance with an instructor (a chronically hunched-over Kelly McGillis). It’s a movie, essentially, about learning to channel one’s stubbornly individualistic spirit into something productive for the collective, and accepting that you’re really good at something without being off-putting about it. 

Read the full column, on Top Gun: Maverick and Pleasure, on 425.