Top Gun is a recruiting poster that isn’t concerned with recruiting but with being a poster.

| Sep 13, 2023

Too bad the entire movie wasn’t airborne; whenever the story touches down, it falls apart in the hand like thousand-year-old parchment.

| Aug 9, 2022

Stupid brilliance...

| May 27, 2022

If you like airplane movies, Top Gun is about one-third of a dazzler, and the rest is at least watchable.

| Nov 3, 2021

The film's intensity mirrors the competitive and wild personalities of the pilots themselves. In this arena, the casting is on-target.

| May 16, 2019

... "Top Gun" is terribly monotonous.

| Feb 9, 2018

The movie, in short, hits its emotional marks, but it does so with such insistence that it feels less like real life than an object lesson in the architecture of the blockbuster.

| Jan 4, 2018

There are elements that hold up - especially Cruise's blinding charisma. The aerial scenes are still thrilling, and perfectly suited to a giant screen. Everything else? Well, that depends on how nostalgic you're feeling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 7, 2013

The aerial sequences in Top Gun are as thrilling -- while remaining coherent -- as any ever put on film.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 6, 2013

Whether you love Top Gun or hate it -- or hate yourself for loving it -- the fact is that when it became the top-grossing film of 1986, Hollywood in its infinite wisdom took all of the worst lessons from its success and overlooked what made it so... fun.

| Original Score: B | Aug 25, 2011

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.

| Mar 8, 2011

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.

| Mar 8, 2011

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

| Jul 7, 2010

The story is risible, the direction routine, the underlying ethic highly questionable; but the flying stirs the blood like speed.

| Jun 24, 2006

Not exactly a cinema classic but it has not only become a cultural icon but remains infinitely rewatchable.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 6, 2005

Once 'Top Gun... gets back to earth, the master of the skies is as clunky as a big land-bound bird.

| May 21, 2003

Top Gun is the type of movie that turns the screen into an altar. Kneeling before its slick façade of 1980s magnificence, you are in the shadow of a film that has defined the modern day action blockbuster.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2000

The dogfights are absolutely the best since Clint Eastwood's electrifying aerial scenes in Firefox. But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 1, 2000