He’s become a modern-day Chuck Yeager, a test-pilot behind the times yet riding the bleeding edge, racing into a void so he can ignore those of his own creation. Tom Cruise introduces us to this complicated man at the beginning of “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and then somewhat shoves him aside for the typical testosterone, posturing, good guys and bad guys of the Jerry Bruckheimer action machine. But all that old machinery, it still works pretty darn good, with an extra-large helping of emotional exploitation. Maverick becomes Yoda. He finds his Luke and they go on a Death-Star-like suicide mission.
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The Simpson-Bruckheimer action recipe is like cinematic comfort food for the adrenaline starved. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence serve up an explosive bowl of macaroni and cheese in “Bad Boys for Life” (2020). Twenty-five years after the first installment of the franchise, cars still explode at the slightest provocation, guns still have unlimited bullets and helicopters still helicopt. Also, bad guys still can’t shoot worth a damn and story lines still take a backseat to blowing shit up. This time Smith’s Mike Lowrey has some kind of Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader thing going on. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.
In 1984, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer made a movie with no helicopters. Not a single goddamn thing blows up. “Thief of Hearts” is an erotic thriller in which Steven Bauer robs a suburban couple’s house, then seduces the wife, all while looking extremely pretty. (The opposite of pretty? Bauer’s crime partner, a young David Caruso.) A couple more sex scenes and it would have been perfect for the Friday night 11:30 timeslot on Skinemax. But there aren’t. And it isn’t. It was the lowest-grossing film Simpson/Bruckheimer ever made. Their next effort was “Beverly Hills Cop.” The rest is history.
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