For the first half hour of watching this I thought "this holds up well" - with it's montages, and luscious photography and Tony Scott stylistics - plus the dramatic heavyweights of Robert Duvall and Randy Quaid acting away, and the camp factor of Tom Cruise arriving on his motorcycle being Cole Trickle, clashing with Michael Rooker (remember when he was the up and comer in Hollywood) and so on.
A lot of this has been mocked over the years but the things that are normally held up for ridicule are actually charming: John C Reilly appearing in a support part (when he'd later send up the film in Talledega Nights), Nicole Kidman as a hilariously young neurosurgeon, Don Simpson playing a race driver, all the late 80s excess (big hair, sunglasses). There are plenty of memorable bits, like zooming around the race track to 'Gimme Some Lovin', the rental car race between Rooker and Cruise, the meet cute between Kidman and Cruise.
The big problem with it is the story, which is hopelessly murky. In Top Gun the dramatic lines were clear - Maverick was haunted by the ghost of his father's reputation, he had a best friend who died which causes him a crisis that he had to get though, he struggled to be a team player but learned in the end, he had a competition with Ice Man which was resolved, he learned to let love into his life.
Here it's more confusing. Cole Trickle is basically a good kid who wants to be liked, there's something in his past with his dad but nothing really; he has an at times difficult relationship with Duvall but not really; he becomes mates with Michael Rooker who can't recover from an accident and so Cole drives his car but Duvall says he shouldn't or something and Rooker doesn't die; Cary Elwes comes in as a villain but never does anything that villainous, does he - he's aggressive on the track, sure, but no more than Rooker or Cruise/Cole, but we're supposed to hiss at him because...? His girlfriend has short hair whereas Rooker and Cruise have girlfriends with long hair? Randy Quaid seems set up to become villainous by preferring Elwes to Cruise but then at the end helps Cruise compete in the race, so you wonder what point he has in the whole movie?
It's like a whole bunch of script decisions were made because of fear of being too close to Top Gun - "oh we don't want Rooker to die because that's too close to Top Gun", "we don't want Cruise to be haunted by his past because that's too close to Top Gun", "we dont want him to go on an egomaniac to team player journey because that's too close to Top Gun" - but they haven't replaced it with anything as interesting/compelling. Cruise is a danger on the track at the beginning and by the end of the film hasn't really learned his lesson (at one stage he even takes off after a taxi driver with a terrified Kidman as a passenger.... she dumps him because of his, understandably... but then just all of a sudden forgives him and there's no problem).
Still, it's hard not to feel affection for this movie, with Simpson and Bruckheimer running loose, and Robert Towne selling out, and Nickers and Tom having little on screen chemistry despite hooking up in real life. I think when you mention it's name most movie fans smile, and that's worth something.
No comments:
Post a Comment