Top Gun (1986), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), and the latest Top Gun

Last weekend I watched two military-themed movies, Heartbreak Ridge and Top Gun, both from 1986. Both have similar parallels and deal with senior officers training younger fighters. In Heartbreak Ridge, Clint Eastwood is a marine about to retire but gets put in charge of training some new recruits including Mario Van Peeples, whose character is really interesting; he's a musician and loves to sing and perform in bars and occasionally gets in trouble or thrown in jail for reckless behavior. Eastwood's character is pretty reckless, too and the two form an unlikely relationship. I'd like to have seen a whole movie about Mario Van Peeples's character, similar to how the "Maverick" character is portrayed as the focus of Top Gun. But it was an okay movie; one needs to keep remembering that it is a movie set and made in the 1980s. One bizarre scene involves the marines trying to make a long-distance phone call with a credit card. 

The two Top Gun movies are pretty similar to the Eastwood movie, I feel. In the first movie, the focus is not on the senior officer but of course Tom Cruise's character and friends. For whatever reason, I never saw this movie before last week.... but as I was watching, I was paying close attention to some of the details because I knew there'd be some callbacks in the sequel. The movie was good had some good flying sequences.

Then I saw the sequel, which came out last weekend, and I liked it better than the first. It had some typical Hollywood cliches, but I didn't mind them because I was basically looking for mindless escapism and fun and so I didn't criticize the film too heavily. The sequel is a bit more like Heartbreak Ridge because the "older" Cruise character is now the senior officer on the verge of retiring and faced with training some young hotshots. And I liked that the Val Kilmer character got promoted to admiral, but Cruise never advanced that far. And it was nice to see a diverse group of fighter pilots. And I liked the pairing of Cruise and Jennifer Connelly who is a bar owner and has becomes the love interest. Their scenes were really good and reminded me of Eastwood's and Marsha Mason's in Heartbreak Ridge a little bit, especially the ending. 

 

American Sniper (2014) directed by Clint Eastwood

American Sniper stars Bradley Cooper as the real life Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. It was recently released on DVD/Blu-Ray and I was able to catch up with the film, which has been both acclaimed and criticized. The main criticisms seem to stem from objections to the original memoir by Kyle and the US's involvement in Iraq in general. A few months ago, Cooper was a guest on the NPR program Fresh Air with Terry Gross  and he talked about how the film is meant to be a character study about Kyle and the toll it takes on him and his wife played by Sienna Miller. It sounded sort of like The Hurt Locker, but with Clint Eastwood directing, I didn't know what to expect.

I have heard people say they won't see it; some say it goes against their values (one person I know got into an argument with someone supporting the film), and another person said they won't see it because they are not Republican and not pro-American. So I'm wondering, is this film so one-sided? Eastwood's films are usually thought-provoking and politically neutral (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, etc).

After seeing, I'd probably give the movie two stars out of four. Average to me. I didn't think it was a terribly made film but something about it didn't fully satisfy me; something was missing. I liked the idea of exploring the soldier's inner plight and life at home after his deployments (four of them are depicted). And I was impressed with the combat scenes, very intense and realistic, on par with Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers and Letters to Iwo Jima (I only saw parts of those).

Not so convincing (or interesting) to me were the scenes with Cooper and Miller, who I thought was miscast in the role. Her character has many emotional scenes and plays an important part of the film - the film is almost as much about her as it is about Kyle. But I didn't think she had chemistry with Cooper. In the early scenes where they are dating Miller says she doesn't want to marry a soldier. Then later, Cooper asks Miller if she likes country music, and she says no and it made me wonder what they really had in common.

I think there are some good scenes where Cooper deals with his emotions when he's back at home, such as the scene in the bar where he needs some time alone, which I think is one of the best scenes in the movie. I also enjoyed the scenes where he volunteers his time with the wounded vets. I was reminded a little of Hurt Locker and Born on the Fourth of July (1989); both films are better in my opinion.

I wish there were more scenes with Cooper interacting with more people at home - perhaps with other family members, or with an older veteran, say from Vietnam or WWII. There was one or two quick moments with his brother, but I would have liked to have seen more because the Sienna Miller scenes were rather dull to me.

Also I'd like to have seen some explorations of Kyle's faith; his character seems hot-tempered and less than reverent in the beginning of the film. Later he declares his faith in a higher power a few times but it's not explored enough where I understood. Sergeant York (1941) was a better film that explored this theme with more insight I feel.