Metacritic reviews

Top Gun is not so much a movie in the conventional sense as an escalating series of masterfully crafted adverts: motorcycles, aircraft carriers, pectorals and planes all look as if they’ve been shot for a particularly luminous beer campaign.

Set in the world of naval fighter pilots, pic has strong visuals and pretty young people in stylish clothes and a non-stop soundtrack.

Top Gun has always been more than just an action flick about a cocky young fighter pilot who feels the need for speed.

No doubt about it: Top Gun is going to be the hit that "The Right Stuff" should have been. They are not in the same class of films, but this much must be said: The aerial sequences in Top Gun are as thrilling -- while remaining coherent -- as any ever put on film.

This is a movie that comes in two parts: It knows exactly what to do with special effects, but doesn't have a clue as to how two people in love might act and talk and think.

The flight sequences in “Top Gun” may arouse aerial buffs. Still, this movie approaches its subject in such juvenile, superficial way that it’s clear the producers were merely in a hurry to cash in on Hollywood’s new wave of Rambo-style patriotism.

The excitement is switched off on landing. Once Top Gun, which opens today at Loews Astor Plaza and other theaters, gets back to earth, the master of the skies is as clunky as a big land-bound bird.

What TOP GUN contributes to the genre is an increased emphasis on military hardware and an almost homoerotic attraction for male bodies, mostly sweaty ones.

Top Gun is about the training of the Navy's best fighter pilots and their blooding in cold war incidents, and the only thing Director Tony Scott has not brought up to date is the story. It is the one about the hotdog who has to be taught to be a team player. They were peddling that one before Writers Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr. were born.

Every moment is hyped for maximum visual and visceral impact, but Scott doesn't display the slightest bit of interest (or belief) in the actual characters and situations.