Top Gunner…please oh please NO

Its lockdown you need something to watch so you go looking through a list of releases, and come across one that looks a bit familiar. When you see a movie with this title what is the first thing that comes to mind, the makers are playing on the well known 80s movies, that shot Tom Cruise to fame. The cover art of this looks in the same vein as the original, has the wonderful top gun typeface. But after pressing play on this one it takes just seconds to figure out, this isnt top gun. The way they dance around the name and have to call the best pilot a top gunner is a bit of a clue.. Add this to the lack of real flying anywhere to be seen and you are off to a seriously rocky start with this movie. Plus if your in a bad mood it has to be an insult here to all movies before and after it.

When I think on it, there was a clue to the level of thought that went into this movie when you look at the artwork they picked, there was no action shot, its a stock faceless helmet no planes, no carrier.

And its not good from the outset, there are multitude cuts and idiotic details that only someone who has never seen an action movie of the 2000 era would miss.

From the first scene. We have three “army” specialists trying to steal back a mysterious box from a bad guy.. A pretty standard idea, the military want back some stolen technology, but since when do they carry it in a metal box.

The opening scenes are cheap to say the least, 4 actors in a wood. Daylight. The bad acting starts immediately, with the “sniper” squinting supposedly to see the enemy. The bad guys seem to be your normal intelligence levels, they parachute into america in broad daylight, wearing fatigues. They stand in a semi opening carefully handing over this oh so secret box, and bang the sniper makes a dead shot to a head, the only major issue with this is its clearly CGI blood and the reaction is delayed, if your gonna get shot you usually notice immediately not a split second later..But then they cut back to the sniper, and you see the weapon used in this supposed shot,a 50 calliber long range riffle, the real version of which, anyone who has seen any army movie knows, could punch a fist sized hole through a tank! She pulls the trigger once more, and instead of a jolt that would knock over a marine, there is nothing, no inkling of movement a this gun lets out a little “pink” of a noise, pretending it has some form of noise suppression on it, and once more a tiny hole appears in the enemy.

So to sum up, we have parachute in america, a sniper gun with no recoil and a canon supposedly putting itty bitty holes in people.

After this, first two minutes you sit thinking, this cant possibly get worse, can it? well it can. More bad guys turn up from knowere, they come towards our sniper team, so she reloads..Cocking back the side loader of our weapon, only now you can see it has a full size ammunition magazine and the loading handle she is using is the normal one to load a single shot… because its .AN AUTOMATIC GUN by pulling the pin back. Oh and no empty shell comes out, you see nothing this is not at all good cinematography. Perhaps the budget wouldnt stretch to real bullets. Again little holes CGI blood and no recoil its laughable, and insulting.

Do you stop now, should you stop this from playing, is this an insult, well no your this far so keep going. Lets see how bad it gets. Cut to next scene, you have to think they would make a bit of effort, well NO, Eric Roberts, stands in a field with binoculars saying damn allot, as he supposedly watches badly generated CGI planes fly above him, what is he supposed to be SUPERMAN no way if it was real would he see ANYTHING. Its all insulting and I am afraid lays the foundation for the rest of this poor movie. We see the regular trick of budget movies, the actors get into a cockpit in a tight shot because it isnt real, they all only ever show close ups because well, they arent flying or even films of real flying planes. Even bad B movies used to go to the trouble of buying stock footage from old movies rather than go for this cheap computer generated planes.

Add to this that the training ground for these top gunners, appears to be not a base but a brown field in the middle of nowhere and its all pretty pathetic. All flying is CGI and poor at best, the acting is so bad its funny, not good funny just funny and you have case in fact, one of the worst movies of all time.

The makers of this film should be sued, they are using the implication of the original movie to sell this film this piece of cinematic garbage when it should be relegated to the sale bin in any charity shop. The story line is abysmal, there is no real flying in it, there are no real locations in it, the attention to detail is so poor it shouldne be mentioned. No in summary this is garbage of the worst order.

I normally give things a mark out of 5 stars, but in this case i think there is a need to skip it so here is my first 0.