Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 106

Fridays 'Section' HrJJ ft! Top Guff TiltST teright iFigscenes MMMMk dent-anW MkiiL L5 target witntnniiingTiy doubt about it: "Top Gun" is ft going 10 dc uic mi uiai me Right Stuff' should have been. They are not in the same class of "Top Gun" Mini-review: An officer and a stud Directed by Tony Scott! written by Jkn CmIi end Jack Eppe Jf.i mueic by Harold Foltermeyer; produced by Don Simpson and Jarry Bruckheimer. A Paramount ralaata at tno Carnegie and outlying theater. Rated pa THE CAST PeteMrtehe TomCmfaa Charlotte Blackwood Kaay McCMae "Iceman" Kozaneky Val Kilmer "Gooee" Bndehew Anthony Edward Commander Mike MimH Tom Skerritt ilms, but this much must be said: The jerial sequences in "Top Gun" are as drilling while remaining coherent as iny ever put on film. Believe me, youll sit there asking your-ielf about the filmmakers, "How did they io that?" As a result "Top Gun" makes us idolize et pilots, and surely that's one of its goals.

-r It the Navy brass had any brains, they'd have a jet pilot school recruiter in the lobby of every theater where "Top Gun" is playing. Sure it's a colorful, warmongering film for the jingoistic Reagan era, but that doesn't make its flying sequences -TV'' I ar -wi tub sly Tom Cruise becomes involved with flight instructor Kelly McGillis in Top Gun. ces, he just happens to have flown with Pete's dad in Vietnam. But the plot of "Top Gun" literally flies out the window when the daring young men get inside their $36-million F-14 Tomcat flying machines and zoom off into the sky and, later, onto aircraft carriers. Again, we watch and say to ourselves, "How do they do that?" Obviously, director Tony Scott, who got his start like his brother Ridley Scott making TV commercials in England, received tremendous cooperation from the Navy in placing his cameras inside the planes.

But to Scott's credit he shows more than mere speed on the screen; he shows maneuverability and strategy. Actor Cruise, however, does not win any points for what looks like a case of the "I-know-I'm-cute" syndrome. He appeared self-conscious in "Risky Business," and we believed him. Here, of course, he is playing a cocky character, but there are moments when we can see him acting and sense his posing. McGillis, so fresh in "Witness," has a thankless role as a sexpot in a bomber jacket She is given lines to speak that are beneath her onscreen integrity.

And yet the picture works on the gut-grabbing, roller coaster level The next time I meet a jet pilot, I probably will ask him, "How do you do that?" any less exciting. Where "Top Gun" falls apart to the xint of being offensive is in its pedestrian, ally, sexist love story in which a Navy adet pilot Tom Cruise from "Risky Busi-tess" seduces his senior female flight ins-ructor Kelly McGillis from Sure, and I fell in love with my drill nstructor at Ft Leonard Wood, Mo. Their romance is so phony that it xlongs in a teenage-sex-fantasy film and tot in a movie that deserves the genuine omantic value of "An Officer and a jentleman." That doesn't mean "Top Gun" will be iny less of a hit high school girls will woon over Cruise but it does carry the iated macho message that women make wsses at men who drink from shot glasses, bruise and his buddies are a hard-flying, lard-drinking crowd. The love story also interrupts the film's convincing portrayal of male bonding in dangerous situations. So we sit there barely tolerating the love story, which we know has been inserted only for commercial reasons something for the girls.

The title "Top Gun" refers to the highest honor a jet fighter pilot can earn during training at the Navy's Fighter Weapons School, located at Miramar Naval Air Station just north of San Diego. It is there we meet a bunch of cocky young men and follow them through their training. As in "An Officer and a Gentleman," the central male character is a young man with a lot of talent and a father-induced chip on his shoulder. Whereas Richard Gere's father was a layabout and a drunk in "An Officer and a Gentleman," Cruise's dad was a crack pilot who died in a mysterious plane crash in Vietnam that Cruise refuses to believe was his father's fault So Lt Pete "Maverick" Mitchell they all have nicknames constantly overextends himself to prove his dad's innocence. The parallels between "An Officer and a Gentleman" and "Top Gun" are many more.

Pete Mitchell also has a best buddy beautifully played by Anthony Edwards who doesn't have the same natural talent Pete, but has a purer heart And instead of Lou Gossett's memorable, menacing drill sergeant, 'Top Gun" features the fine, underrated actor Tom Skerritt as the school's top instructor. He's more of the strong silent type, and in one of the film's many unnecessary coinciden- Alda is just too much in 'Sweet Liberty1 By Gene Siskel Movie critic lan Alda's "Sweet Lib- 1 has a quality "Sweet Liberty" MM-review: Alda's way Written and directed by Alan Aide; photo- frephed by Frank Tidy; edited by Michael conomeu; muale by Bruce aVoughtonj produced by Manm Bregman; a Unioerael raleaea at the Water Tower and outlying meetere. Rated PO-1S. THE CAST Michael Bumaaa Alan Alda that one never would associate with the ge CMOn JWM FaittiHealy Stanley OouM Oretcnen Canaan Cecene Surgeee The way Alda plays his role and the way he occupies almost every scene makes his character as big of a star as the star delightfully played by Michael Caine, who is having quite a year with this film and "Hannah and Her Sisters" of the movie being made. Actually, an even bigger problem with "Sweet Liberty" is that it is about nothing, unless it means to tell us that movie companies run roughshod over small towns.

But we all know that And Albeit Brooks already made the definitive film on that subject with "Real Life" 1978. What happens in "Sweet Liberty" is that Caine's character romances many of the ladies in town while Alda falls for the film's leading lady, a siren played with a nice, tough edge by the underrated Michelle Pfciffer But so what? The romances will end when the film company moves on. We all know that As for Alda the director, he has managed to get from himself the worst performance nial Alda himself. This would-be comedy is, at times, incredibly smug. That Alda is the writer, direc-.

tor and star of the picture makes us wonder if he hasn't become a little too much enamored of himself. Certainly he has no business playing a college professor who is absolutely startled when one of his books about the Revolutionary War is adapted for a movie and turned into an 18th-century soap opera. Doesn't everyone know Hollywood makes mostly trash these days? Alda is too smart for the role he's cast himself in, and he never gets into character. When his town is inundated with the movie crew, we're supposed to believe that Alda's professor is just one rube among many. No way.

he has ever given on film. The same goes for his treatment of the wonderful, bulldog-like, English actor Bob Hoskins "The Long Good who wildly overplays his role as the film's crude and desperate screenwriter who has adapted Caine's book and knows it's a lousy script. A little less shouting from Hoskins would go a long way. "Sweet liberty" also, includes a pointless sequence involving the legendary Lillian Gish, 86, as Alda's mother. She seems to have been cast so Alda could reflect in her glory.

Her role and Alan Alda has a man-to-dog talk with Rex In "Sweet Liberty their scenes together add nothing to the film. "Sweet liberty" only draws a laugh or eyeful when Caine and Pfeiffer are on screen alone or together, and that's not often. That's because "Sweet Liberty" is Alda's ego trip. And there's irony there, because for someone who prides himself in real life for not being a male chauvinist pig, Alda certainly hogs his own movie..