Top Gun

At least initially, Top Gun presents as a defiantly shallow experience. The story of Tom Cruise's Maverick, a Naval hot-shot who encounters a top-secret Soviet aircraft, is told with the glossy visual language of an MTV music video. The plot hinges on a relationship between this young man and an older woman, Kelly McGillis' Charlie Blackwood, a civilian instructor at the TOPGUN Naval academy who has Pentagon-level clearance. Jim Cash and Jack Epps Jr.'s screenplay describes Maverick in far younger terms than would be appropriate for a serious-minded military thriller. There's still something of the frat-boy pugilist about him and his desire to transform every encounter or relationship into a kind of game: endless opportunity for Maverick to flash his boyish smile then come out on top. This coping mechanism comes under attack when Maverick is recruited for a secretive wargame that requires heated de-briefs from dangling love interests in front of an audience of chilly peers. 

Sport is stressed again, this time in structural terms. Maverick is the small-town star graduating to a college-level arena in which everyone is just as skilled as he is. How will he cope? By sleeping with his professor, of course. Eventually, a creeping doubt in his own abilities as well as an acute identity issue begin to pick away at this Maverick. Characters within the film begin to address him not by the super cool call-sign he self-identifies with but by his less exciting civilian name. This penetration of Maverick's deliberately constructed carapace is doubly troublesome for the young man because his family name carries its own weight. Grins becomes grimaces; exposing imperfect teeth. Maverick's father, Duke Mitchell, was a Vietnam era pilot who perished in such a way that all records of his passing are sealed and stamped confidential. Maverick's true name, Pete Mitchell, initially registers as a kind of invective, deployed to undermine. Eventually though - after Maverick learns the heroic truth of his own father's death - the name takes on a liberating and transformational power of its own. Maverick's late acceptance of this less obviously flashy persona resolves his insecurities, allowing him to become a more complete dogfighter. 

Director Tony Scott and cinematographer Jeffrey L. Kimball employ the commercial beauty of car adverts to bolster an artistic intent that wavers (knowingly) between these softcore pornographies and a seat-of-your-pants coverage that recalls reportage. Male bodies are lovingly appraised, noting the pinkness of their sunburnt skin or the ripple of a flexed muscle. The actors are therefore transformed into products, as adoringly photographed as the F-14 Tomcats that batter in and out of frame during the airborne battles. A clear constant across all Scott's work though is the desire to glimpse (then project) secret moments of genuine expertise; be that Denzel Washington's wounded bear act in Man on Fire or a tight close-up of a pistol ejection port being put through its paces by a dead-eyed Mafiosi in True Romance. Top Gun's opening credits are built around supersonic jets landing then taking off from a frigate at sunset. We don't follow the peeling aircraft though, we stay with the people hustling and prepping for the next influx. The sequence even accounts for the idea that, for these Signal Officers, there's a sense of monotony to this task. They've done it many times before. Scott and Kimball then, assisted by Chris Lebenzon and Billy Weber's edit, draw out the tiny, dreamily focused moments in which these men add flourish to their actions. We see them break - ever so briefly - from a well-drilled discipline to display anachronistic, human moments amongst all the cold military machinery. 

Bad Boys 2

There's an argument to be made that Michael Bay's Bad Boys 2 is the purest attempt by Hollywood to recreate a Hong Kong style action film. Bay's film doesn't try to replicate the platonic ideal of John Woo's The Killer though, instead it's closer to something people in Hong Kong might've actually wanted to see, a film like Sammo Hung's dayglo matinee My Lucky Stars. Like Hung's film Bad Boys 2 has wild mood shifts and a dramatic premise completely subservient to seeing our favourite film stars yukking it up. Terrifying action choreography is bracketed by scenes of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence bickering about upholstery; Michael Bay cross-pollinates Golden Harvest star vehicles with rap album skits and gun porn.

In Bad Boys 2 countries are invaded to right familial transgressions. Comedy routines about buck-toothed Klansmen track into gooey head shots and two entirely separate sequences objectify cadavers. A significant chunk of the middle section is given over to the two leads posing as pest exterminators in an effort to infiltrate the bad guy's mansion. There's no attempt to build any real tension - we don't feel like either of their lives are in danger. Instead it's an opportunity to push a camera in extremely close to Martin Lawrence's awed, sweaty face as he watches two rats copulate missionary. Basically, Bad Boys 2 lives to entertain you. It doesn't know what you want, so it tries to give you everything. Here are some apocalyptic car crashes. Maybe you didn't like that so here's Smith and Lawrence talking about anal sex. If that didn't do it for you, how about a shoot-out in which the camera moves in and around the combatants like a snake?

Bad Boys 2 even has the good grace to roll with an adult certificate - this isn't bad taste cinema as smuggled Summer product, it's brazen. Invective and exit wounds. Intended to be seen by its most enthusiastic audience on home video. Bad Boys 2 doesn't pretend to be a tight narrative experience, it takes the bare model of a cops and robbers movie and embellishes, hurling money and ego and reality TV musical punctuation at you. Action cinema as a hyper-caffeinated variety act whose sole aim is to make you feel like you got your money's worth. Bad Boys 2 wants you to feel like your price of admission was nothing compared to how many fresh-off-the-assembly-line cars got rolled then gutted.

Pearl Harbor

Was Pearl Harbor Michael Bay's shot at legitimacy? Or a calculated attempt to transform James Cameron's insanely successful Titanic into a template? Bay's film moves in a similar way. Make the audience sit through a feature-length build-up, spiced with threadbare romance, before rewarding them with some exceptionally violent special effects. Bay and co take it further still, staging a heavily fictionalised revenge attack in which our fighter pilot heroes end up as crew on a Tokyo bombing raid.

Cameron's film is far from a masterpiece, but Bay's effort still wilts in comparison. Cameron is a stickler for detail, even using home video re-issues as an opportunity to correct star mappings. Bay doesn't give a shit. Who cares if something's anachronistic, does it look or sound good? Japanese admirals act like Martians drifting between meeting places copped from Akira Kurosawa's Ran and brutalist concrete dug-outs. Distinctively shaped, one-off, prototype planes fly alongside Mitsubishi Zeroes and 1911 pistols ring with the distinctive rapport of a M1 Garand emptying.

Even basic history is put through the wringer. As well as chopping up and rewriting President Roosevelt's national address, the concluding aerial raid is contextualised as a decisive blow against Japan that forced a complete withdrawal. I suppose in this chocolate box universe the Pacific Theatre was oddly uneventful? Watching Pearl Harbor there's a sense that Bay isn't even particularly interested in mise-en-scene as a way to tell an overarching story. Shots aren't detailed in such a way that they inform the viewer of time or space, instead each successive image is composed with an eye to placing as much money on screen as possible.

I'm starting to think there's an economic consideration at play with Michael Bay's popularity. He may be emotionally tone deaf, but all of his films are obviously, relentlessly, expensive. That's what people are buying into, the opportunity to see the latest example of the most costly movie yet realised. Bleeding edge visuals married to an easily digestible human story with interchangeably attractive people. After enjoying the explosions they even get to laugh at it and pick the movie apart. Everybody likes to feel superior and Bay's work is often low-hanging fruit.

Armageddon

Armageddon is maximum ugly. Aside from the lionised heroes at NASA, there's a concerted effort to portray every single human being as revolting. Case in point, an ancient astronomer lives in a magnificent telescope, the blubbery human bullet at the base of this gigantic space cannon. When disturbed he shrieks hideously at his neglected spouse, apparently unable to rouse his crumbling bones long enough to go over and clock her one.

Pre-cataclysm, New York citizens argue in the street over neutered (no dorsal spines) Godzilla merchandise because fuck that radioactive lizard, he's this Summer's competition. When the cosmic debris finally hits, the Big Apple descends into a smog free, petrol pumped inferno. The Empire State catches a particularly large chunk, collapsing into a primitive jumble of rictus CG debris and chroma-keyed falling men. It's a Faces of Death image catapulted at the screen, flanked by flames.

Hero To All Mankind Bruce Willis twats golf balls at a Greenpeace barge for daring to protest his divine right to drill. Perhaps reeling from a preview screening note, there's even an aside to soothe this nasty behaviour. They don't want you to get the wrong idea about Bruno. He's not evil, he's just right! Everybody else screams aggressively all the time. You either accept it or you kick the fucking screen in.

Armageddon is a good sixty minute movie about men training in impossibly expensive artificial caves rolled into a two and a half hour epilepsy simulation. One of the nine writers probably thought he was writing The Dirty Dozen. Another might've been trying to see how far he could push this snarling cockfight. Picture him, a coked up giggler bouncing around on set serving up dialogue passes for Bay that read like YouTube comments. Dare the cast to take it further Mikey! Make 'em improv! Keep doing take after take until Liv Tyler caves and just fucking bites someone!

Armageddon is pure id filmmaking. Generously, it's Michael Bay's thesis on the emotional instability of humans working in high pressure situations. After my most recent viewing I felt like I'd been watching some epic, alien sport. Gridiron football scaled up to include rocket ships and an asteroid that strikes like a serial killer. Worldwide reaction shots swiped from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey. It's not about humanity coming to terms with their emotional response to extinction, it's about a musclebound collective proving their gut instincts trump book learning. Armageddon is impulsive, Neanderthal stupidity triumphing over rational thought.

The Rock

Easily Michael Bay's best film, The Rock strikes a balance between the director's inherent vulgarity and some genuinely compelling character work. As was the norm with the Bruckheimer / Simpson machine, The Rock's script passed through many hands before arriving on-screen. Known contributors include Robert Towne, Quentin Tarantino, and Aaron Sorkin. Porridge writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement performed some uncredited doctoring as well. Since Sean Connery's onboard, there's even a chance that John Milius might've had a pass too. On the Criterion commentary track Nic Cage and Ed Harris both state that their readings informed revision, Cage even stating outright that he reworked pages. So while the dramatic shape of The Rock is malformed and ludicrous, the characters sing. The three leads, Dr Goodspeed, Captain Mason and General Hummel, have been worked and reworked to the point where they're multi-dimensional personalities rather than just rote archetypes. There's no doubling, characters don't share histories or hang-ups. Instead they're three different kinds of professionals dealing with an extraordinary situation. 

Stanley Goodspeed could be just a neurotic sidekick prone to outbursts. While that's still there, it's tempered with an underlying sense of duty. Goodspeed is ill-equipped to deal with the violence inherent to this situation, but he shoulders it because lives are at stake. Goodpseed finds his centre in the ability to dismantle the VX poison rockets. A skill no-one else possesses. A character that could have been lost to comic relief is then elevated to reluctant hero. The audience can invest in his failings and delight in his triumphs. There's an emotional consistency to Goodspeed too. He isn't mutated by the experience. Crucially, killing never becomes comfortable for him. It's always his last recourse in a desperate situation. These writing decisions keep Goodspeed human, informing the relationships he develops, most crucially with Mason. The Rock also functions as a far better send-off for Sean Connery's 007 persona than his last stab at the role, Never Say Never Again. That film only lightly touched on the idea of a defunct, decrepit Bond. The Rock revels in it. It proposes a Bond that has found himself abandoned by his Universal Trading superiors. 

John Mason has had decades to ponder the fallacies of nationality and patriotism. The archetypal company man was discarded, despite his talents. There's an element of Ian Fleming's The Man with the Golden Gun at play. A slower, meaner spy, past his prime and searching for a good death. Mason has had time to consider and re-evaluate his place in the world. An element of sentimentality has crept into his thinking. He wants to engage with his estranged daughter - the result of a one night stand during his last escape. After breaking a few arms, Mason manages to give his FBI handlers the slip. He uses the opportunity to reconnect with his offspring. When Goodspeed and a legion of San Francisco's finest crash the meeting, Mason is thankful for Goodspeed's discretion. These are new emotions for a Bond character - vulnerability, the desire to make connections, gratitude even. Connery's Bond, especially under Terence Young's direction, was a bastard without peer. He roughed up allies and manhandled women into the path of bullets. He was a user. A man programmed to think and act like a shark. Now his back pains him after a fire fight. 

James Bond has never really been given a last case. He's never died or been confronted with finality. The character's forever locked into his late thirties, voraciously consuming. The advancing age of his actors barely figures into the portrayal beyond the odd joke. Mason is Bond confronted with age as reality. His body doesn't work the same way anymore and he's ostensibly alone. While he has a daughter somewhere, at best she's tentative. The route he took to meet her did reveal somebody he can unburden himself on - Goodspeed. Stanley's underlying decency is at odds with superiors who routinely tear up pardons. Mason takes note, making him for a man he can trust. This is one of The Rock's strongest points. It has Heroic Bloodshed ideas in its head. The twin protagonists aren't competing, they're complimenting each other. It's a male relationship film that takes a cultural icon from the 1960s and transforms him into a patient father figure, guiding the nervous young buck. A lot of the reasons Mason has for staying are contrived - he's decided he's too old to swim the San Francisco Bay - but they play into Mason's emerging vulnerability. He's found a friend in Goodspeed and doesn't want to leave him to his death. 

There's a hint of shame too. Goodspeed doesn't stand a chance but he's still game. How can a former super-spy excuse doing less? Which brings us to Ed Harris' General Hummel, a character so well defined and played he unbalances the entire third act. Just so you know he isn't fucking around, Hummel is spoken about in absurd terms. Crisis meetings at the Pentagon are full of hype men talking him up like he's Golgo 13. Hummel appears to have been a sticking point in The Rock's writing. At some point everybody got into a pissing contest trying to explain the psychology and motivations of a man that would do something ridiculous like set up chemical weapon rocket pods on Alcatraz. Hummel isn't just clarified, he's made sympathetic. His cause is just. He's simply seeking reparations for dead soldiers from an uncaring government. Like Goodspeed, Hummel is made exceptional by his altruistic desires. He's also contrasted with the unit that works around him. Goodspeed's superiors want to melt the island, regardless of the hostages. 

Hummel's crew want to get paid though. They couldn't care less about the General's high ideals, they've sniffed out a windfall. This is where everything starts to fall apart for Hummel. Rather than have Goodspeed and Mason come in and bust heads, Hummel's group unravels from within after he pilots a rocket away from an American football game and into the drink. Despite his posturing he had no intention of killing innocents. He was bluffing. The Rock lasers in on this moment, hurtling away from the idea of Hummel as a megalomaniac, making the two heroes obsolete in the process. As well sketched as Goodspeed and Mason are, they are just old ideas with a new coat of paint. Hummel's problems are unique and exciting. Henchmen shouldn't mutiny, they're unthinking limbs. When subordinates start unpacking pistols and pointing them at SPECTRE Number 1's head, we're in uncharted territory. This is The Rock's best moment. A Reservoir Dogs idea given centre stage in a $75 million blockbuster. On release it probably seemed glib, Tarantino regurgitating his John Woo steals for the blockbuster crowd. 

It all hangs together though. We've spent time with these men. We understand the falling out. We noted the tensions. Every scene with the Marines has built towards this. When Goodspeed and Mason sneak in you're almost disappointed. You don't want them to resolve the situation. They can observe if they want, but you'd rather they just disappeared altogether. Ed Harris has stolen the film. He looks like he's been carved from wood. You can tell he can kill at whim. The frailties that have made Goodspeed and Mason human now read like weakness when regarding this Terminator. Hummel has won. He has been so magnetic, so unwavering in the face of danger, your allegiance has instantly switched to him. His prowling, arrogant determination is reminiscent of Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare. Now two Nazis have turned up to stick their fucking noses in. The Rock's myriad writers put their characters first and ended up making something bizarre, a Summer blockbuster in which you root for the bad guy. Rather than resolve with a big win for the home team, events taper off into utter chaos driven, primarily, by spite and greed.