Prime Video movie of the day: Top Gun Maverick is an infinitely rewatchable thrill ride

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Sequels to iconic movies don’t come much better than this: Top Gun: Maverick, the sequel to the 1986 Tom Cruise blockbuster, is just as much fun as the original – and it comes garlanded with rave reviews too. It’s currently sitting with a well deserved 96% rating from the critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and an even more impressive 99% from viewers, and it’s available on Prime Video.

Tom Cruise returns as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell, the test pilot who can’t be tamed. And this time around he’s training a new squad of Top Gun graduates for a terrifyingly dangerous mission, a mission that’ll make him confront his own deepest fears and risk everything. You know, standard Cruise stuff.

Watch Top Gun: Maverick on Prime Video

What’s so great about Top Gun: Maverick?

Top Gun: Maverick is proof that sometimes they still do make ’em like they used to: this is a spiritual as well as literal successor to the bombastic, jingoistic, over-the-top and faintly ridiculous original, a sequel that some reviewers felt was even better than the first: Edge Media Network certainly thought so, calling it “an astonishing and glorious film that far surpassing its mediocre predecessor with a good story, amazing tech credits and some fab performances beginning with Cruise himself”.

The Ringer said that while the story isn’t exactly ground-breaking “It helps that the filmmaking is pretty much impeccable, with director Joseph Kosinski providing the kind of clear, streamlined action sequences that make blockbuster spectacle feel fun instead of mandatory.” And The AV Club praised Cruise: “Cruise commands the screen in a performance that leverages his multimillion-dollar star wattage to brighten the entire film.”

It’s nostalgic for sure, but not lazily so: Maverick isn’t just a lazy retread of the first movie but a new story told with exceptional stunt work and special effects, leading the Chicago Reader to predict that “Cruise’s foray back into the danger zone will be remembered more than the original, setting a new standard in the era of reboots.” As The Financial Times happily admitted, the story was “hokum” – but “the storytelling too reminds you of the best version of old Hollywood, broad strokes rendered with watchmaker care.”

As we said in our Top Gun: Maverick review, “In a little over two hours, Cruise, Bruckheimer and Kosinski manage to deliver a film that both pays homage to Top Gun’s legacy and breaks new ground for modern filmmaking.” It’s that good, and absolutely ranks among the best Prime Video movies.