Top Gun: Maverick review: Tom Cruise returns to skies in high-octane action-adventure

It's a blend of action thriller and nostalgia vehicle that wears its heart on its sleeve. 

Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick

★★★★☆

The world and its wars may have changed in the decades since Top Gun (1986) propelled Tom Cruise into the stratosphere, but Maverick is as maverick does. And so Top Gun: Maverick (12A) opens with veteran test pilot Captain Pete Mitchell, aka Maverick (Tom Cruise), breaking the rules as he attempts to fly hypersonic, after which he is summoned by Admiral ‘Iceman’ Kazansky (Val Kilmer) and commissioned to teach a new generation of pilots how to fly an impossible mission: destroy a nuclear reactor being built by a rogue state.