Top Secret! (1984)

Director: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Cast: Val Kilmer, Lucy Gutteridge, Christopher Villers, Michael Gough

Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I’m not sure how I made it this far, either.

Did I Like It: I laughed, mostly at non sequitir, but then again I’m a sucker for that which avoids sequitirianism. On that front, as a comedy, it hit its target. Did I laugh as much as I might have in Airplane! (1980) or The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)? Probably not.

What went wrong? A couple of things. First, Val Kilmer isn’t really funny. At all. I’m mystified to learn (and am still more than a little skeptical that it actually went down this way) that he sang all of his songs through the film, but he’s just not funny at all. Somebody like Robert Hays or Leslie Nielsen can milk all of the laughs they want out of playing things straight, but Kilmer can’t find that magic. I did like seeing Kilmer play off of the great character actor Michael Gough—who can be funny—but that’s more for other reasons.

Any movie would be doomed if it is that fundamentally miscast for the number one on the call sheet, but problems go deeper than that. Spy movies can be spoofed, sure. As much as the whole shtick got a little tired, the first Austin Powers largely works. Other genres are apt, like cop movies and the disaster film. By now, literally every genre has gotten the treatment with wildly varying degrees of success. But who literally cares about Elvis pictures? Even those who view the King as some sort of semi-religious figure can’t with a straight face claim that Viva Las Vegas (1964) and Blue Hawaii (1961) were worth a damn. A genre has to have some sort of quality to it before it can be ripe for satire. The Elvis movie is barely a genre, much less a beloved one.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer

Have I Seen it Before: Nope. Missed any sort of convenient IMAX screening, and I’ll probably just have to live with that. Drifted into a matinee recently more than a month after the film’s release.

Which felt like a safe thing to do, not just from the COVID side of things, but because this tends to minimize encounters with the absolute dumbest people to emerge from underneath rocks. I’m definitely one of those guys generally less enthralled by seeing a movie with a crowd (although the right crowd—difficult though it is to find—does have its charms), than with seeing bigger movies on the biggest screen possible.

No such luck this time, though. The screening was already crowded when I got my tickets, which should have been my first alarm bell. I was enjoying my popcorn just at the limit of social distancing, and some jabroni takes the seat right next to mine. I’m doing a quick calculation in my head regarding the average vaccination status of a Top Gun audience on a Wednesday afternoon, and at first I think I have three choices. First, slap on my KN95 and abandon all hope of enjoying the rest of my popcorn. Second, just leave before the movie starts.

Both are unacceptable. So, in desperate need of a third option, I broke the social contract of the modern moviegoing experience and moved to a seat for which I had not bought a ticket. It felt simultaneously rebellious and safe, and I got to finish my popcorn. What’s more, I moved to the front row, and that was probably the better way to take in this film anyway.

Did I Like It: Oh, sure. You probably want to hear more about the movie itself. Much has been said about how much better this film is than the original Top Gun (1986). They are right, but I can’t help but wonder if this is because this film is truly that great, or because the original film is not much more than an energetic pageant of the state of masculinity in the mid-80s. This one has an actual story. There are stakes. Several characters go through something resembling an arc. That’s already something. Is the story kind of preposterous and ultimately hinges on the insane idea that an enemy (let’s not name them, because nothing in a film dates it more than identifying the collective bad guy) base has a mostly-ignored, still-in-working-order, retro-bordering-on-antique fighter jet ready for Maverick (Cruise) and Rooster (Teller) to use to make their escape? Yes, but it exists, and there’s a nice little romance between Cruise and Jennifer Connelly to help make the larger preposterousness go down easier.

I think what people are really responding to is the cinematography of the aviation sequences, which are truly an improvement not only for the series, but the idea of aerial photography in general. There were several moments I genuinely wondered how the production obtained the shots they did without just letting Cruise actually pilot priceless warplanes. I don’t think I really want to know.

Top Gun (1986)

Director: Tony Scott

Cast: Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis, Val Kilmer, Anthony Edwards

Have I Seen it Before: I’m sure I have. All of the “big” lines of the film hit something like a memory, but I can’t say I can point to a moment where I saw the whole film from beginning to end.

Did I Like It: And that’s maybe part of the problem. This is a movie of moments which don’t really hang together as a whole piece. That quality—a collection of pieces which don’t measure up to a complete whole—is endemic of a lot of 80s films. For instance, Rocky IV (1985) might qualify as a short if you take away all of the montage—although I haven’t seen the recent director’s cut.

One can almost feel Cruise aching to take more direct control over the films in which he appears, but for the mean time has to be content with being charming but restrained in films.

And there’s more than enough charm to go around. A Harold Faltermeyer score immediately launches any film into the territory of pure 80s confection, even those he scored outside the decade. The cast is never not charming, including not just supporting turns from Kilmer and Edwards, but also blink-and-you-miss-them performances from actors who would eventually go on to bigger things like Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins. Yes, Robbins hovers around the edges of the film, spending the run time as not much more than a glorified extra.

One wonders how somebody like Robbins drifted (and I assure you, he does drift) into a film with such jingoistic politics. A film treating the essentially inevitable outbreak of World War III as  the feel good turn for the third act would never be made out of the 1980s (at least, I don’t think it would, I’ll let you know when I finally get around to seeing Top Gun: Maverick (2022)) and probably shouldn’t be made by any reasonable person, ever. Maybe if it did try to weave together a more coherent, fuller package of a movie, it would be impossible to have any fun with it at all.

Heat (1995)

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Tom Sizemore, Val Kilmer

Have I Seen it Before: No.

Did I Like It: I think for the most part, sure. It is perhaps the seminal crime movie of its age, having an indelible influence on the works of Christopher Nolan, especially The Dark Knight (2008) and Inception (2010)*. In a way that only filmmaker like Mann—and later Nolan—could, the film captures crime and law enforcement in a simultaneously epic and believable way. 

De Niro and Pacino have shown up to work in the film, and indeed it is the last example I can readily come up with where it didn’t seem like they were just showing up on set to pick up a check. Pacino might be particularly amped up to the peak of his late-stage-rage, but that can be fun to watch in the proper context. The rest of the cast, too, is at their best, with even bit parts being inhabited by actors I would watch do other things, all performing at the top of their game. Although it’s hard to watch Hank Azaria do much while I’ve been doing a Simpsons re-watch and not think of the character work he has done there.

But there is just something about the work of Mann that skips over the virtues and keeps everything from being as great as it might be. There’s a mannered, fashionable quality to his films. It keeps Manhunter (1986) from joining the pantheon of other great, Hannibal Lecter adaptations. It kept Public Enemies (2009) from being watchable beyond a sleep aid. Here, you have bank robbery sequences that are as good as anything ever committed to film. The tension never lets up, and never a second is wasted. Then, you have longer music interludes that seem soggy. Composer Elliot Goldenthal can do action music better than anyone, but his emotional beats just don’t work. See Batman Forever (1995) for other examples of Val Kilmer films from 1995 which suffered a similar fate. There are scenes of characters talking around but not to their significant others that feel like they were filmed on a cheap set instead of a real city. 

Then again, that may just be the way L.A. is. 

Those take me right out of the film, but you can’t fault the film for working when it does, because at those moments it is transcendent.

*Seriously, take away the dream-based science fantasy of that later film, and Inception practically is a remake of Heat. For that matter, there’s a reason Willima Fichtner plays the banker. I’ll let you decide which movie I’m talking about.

Batman Forever (1995)

Director: Joel Schumacher

Cast: Val Kilmer, Chris O’Donnell, Jim Carrey, Nicole Kidman

Have I Seen It Before?: Ah, 1995. It was a simpler time. Apparently. There I am, ten going on forty-seven, a Riddler (Carrey) action figure in one hand, the novelization of the movie in another. Somewhere in the distance, “Kiss From a Rose” is playing on every radio station in the known universe. I had the above poster hanging in my room well into the twenty-first century.

Yeah, I saw it.

Did I like it?: In a word, no.

A weird and idiosyncratic blockbuster (or as weird and idiosyncratic as a film is like to get when a board of directors is at all involved in the creative process) is unleashed into theaters. Some fans balk. Others think it is a work of genius. Toys don’t sell as well, which is the real problem. Another director is pulled into right the ship. Who cares if the movie is any good, as long as it doesn’t piss off anybody?

Now, am I speaking of the state of play of the Star Wars saga at this very moment, or the circumstances surrounding the Dark Knight twenty-five years ago?

The differences between the two situations are cosmetic, at best, aside from the reality that Star Wars – Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) is nowhere near the weird, intentionally ugly film* that became Batman Returns (1992). And so we are stuck with both Star Wars – Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and Batman Forever. Both are less films than they are studio memos with a runtime. Both were mangled mercilessly in the editing room. Both are (probably) going to make a ton of money, and the studio that birthed the film will not learn a damned thing.

The campiness isn’t even the problem. Both the tv series and the feature film Batman (1966) revel in their campiness and are infinitely rewatchable delights. 

No character has any real arc to speak of, aside from maybe Dick Grayson (O’Donnell) who wants to kill Two-Face (Jones, inexplicably pigeon-holed into a c-minus Jack Nicholson impression that would be embarrassing to anything beyond single-celled organisms) but then decides he won’t. One would think that this would please Batman (Kilmer, forever cementing the fact that Michael Keaton is an American treasure), who has spent the entirety of the film’s runtime discouraging his nascent protégé against the evils of vengeance for the sake of vengeance. Instead, Batman immediately kills Two-Face himself. Also, the Riddler and a blonde lady are there. Fade Out. Roll Credits. Cue Seal.

That’s it. That’s the whole movie. 

*A sincere compliment, I assure you.