Pun Salad

The IMDB raters have this at spot #44 in the best movies of all time (between Whiplash and The Intouchables) and who am I to argue. Pun Son and I went to see it down at the Newington Regal. Expensive as movies are these days, it was worth it. Walking out to the parking lot, I told him that I was still unclenching from the Big Final Sequence.

OK, you probably know the premise, but I'm gonna type it in anyway. Thirty-six years after the events of Top Gun, Pete Mitchell is still a hotshot pilot, irritating most of the US Navy hierarchy by following his own rules. (An opening sequence has him flying a Mach 10 beast to prevent the cutting-edge program from cancellation.)

But menace looms in the form of a uranium enrichment plant about to go online in an unnamed rogue nation. The only possible solution is quite audacious, verging on impossible, a daring strike against ultra-long odds, facing advanced weaponry. Pete is tapped to train the next generation of hotshot pilots to take out the bad guys.

And he does, and they do, everything proceeds flawlessly, and everyone goes home happy.

Just kidding! Pete chafes at not being able to fly the mission himself. A long ago tragedy is unearthed. There are personality conflicts between the pilots. One of Pete's old girlfriends owns a bar near the training base.

And when the mission finally happens, Murphy's Law strikes hard. Quick decisions have to be made at near-supersonic speed. G-forces must be endured.

Yes, I saw the ending coming a few nautical miles off. And so will you, probably. This did not distract from my enjoyment.

And, oh yeah, thirty years after I first saw her in The Rocketeer, Jennifer Connelly is still jaw-droppingly beautiful.