Top Gun: Maverick Review - 8 Ups & 2 Downs

2. The INCREDIBLE Third Act

Without going into spoilerific detail, you are absolutely not ready for the third act of this movie.

Maverick's final 30-or-so minutes involve Maverick's team venturing off on the mission they've been training for throughout the movie, and the result is a mesmerising exercise in sustained aerial mayhem.

At once viscerally thrilling and gut-wrenchingly tense, there's also far more here than you might be expecting. Despite trailers for this film having been literally coming out for years at this point, a lot of the best action beats haven't even been hinted at in the marketing, which is a pleasant surprise.

Plus, most of the action is informed by the character dynamics that've been established over the course of the first two acts, ensuring audiences are near-guaranteed to feel emotionally invested in what's going on.

As set-pieces go, it'll take some doing for any other movie released this year to top the technical ingenuity and palpable stakes of this film's show-stopping climax.