Set during the cold war, a rebellious navy pilot and his partner are chosen to attend the "Top Gun" naval flight training class to train pilots on dogfighting skills.
This movie is at its best during the action scenes. Director Tony Scott managed to turn shots of fast moving jets, pilots turning their heads around a lot, with some special effects and sound throw in for good measure into the best part of the movie.
The love story between McGillis and Cruise is mostly hacked together trash. Cheeseball lines make the love affair not terribly believable, and holds little value in the plot or in the character development.
Still, the movie is held together by the visuals of fighter jets, the navy background, and eventual combat with an un-named enemy. Top Gun is still fun, despite all the faults and cliches.
Don't take it all too seriously though. It's just for fun. This is a movie that doesn't pretend to be real. There's an un-named enemy that gets into a small shooting battle for unknown reasons,, the military seems to allow pilots to make dangerous stunts without punishment, much of the dialogue sounds like it was written by C average college freshmen, and most of the plot is wholly un-believable. If you can ignore all that, it's still fun after all these years.
