Maverick - Review

To describe my viewing experience with Maverick would be like walking through Frontierland in Disneyland with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's a meal that goes down easy, isn't the most extravagant food choice, but still enjoyable, and it's nice to eat it in a fun and romanticized version of the Wild West.

Maverick tells the story of Bret Maverick (Mel Gibson) who is a brilliant poker player and a master at the art of deception. So much so that no matter how much trouble his poker playing gets him into, he is always able to find a sneaky solution and make it out alive. He is interested in joining a winner takes all poker tournament aboard a famous riverboat near St. Louis, Missouri but does not have the amount of money required for the entrance fee. So as we follow Maverick on his journey to the poker tournament, we witness wacky encounter after wacky encounter of all sorts of colorful characters. Some are trying to help him gain the money, some are trying to con him and take him money, some simply want him dead. Sounds like the wild west to me.

Now the story isn't the most compelling as there isn't a major arc or big learning experience Maverick has to go through, but it is an enjoyable ride through a somewhat Disney-like portrayal of the wild west mixed with every western character trope you can think of. You have the old-time Marshal Zane Cooper (James Garner), the smooth-talking sexy con woman Annabelle Bransford (Jodie Foster), the comic relief native chief (Graham Greene), the Mexican gunslinger (Alfred Molina) and so on. Mix in the sometimes too whimsical score by Randy Newman and you have yourself what feels like a Greatest Hits homage to Westerns.

Because the story feels more like a series of wacky events rather than a major character study, what helps is that all of these characters oozing with charisma. Mel Gibson dazzles as the staring role. He has the perfect amount of likeability, charm, and wits for us to happily go along with him on his adventure. Jodie Foster also is great as the "love interest" who keeps you guessing which side she is really on. At moments, you think she genuinely loves our hero, and at others, you wish that Maverick would just put her out of her misery to save himself and us the trouble of her con artist antics. Both of them work well with each other and both give us tons of laughs. When both of these characters are on screen, it's a treat to watch.

Where the movie drags is when these characters are nowhere to be found. Our antagonizing force in the movie isn't necessarily one character, it's the journey in general with all of these things happening to Maverick and company. We do have another rival poker player played by Alfred Molina, but his charisma doesn't come close to matching that of Gibson and Foster and overall isn't the most interesting villain.

This is a movie for people who simply want to sit back and take a journey into the wild west and have some fun. Is it a movie that you will be remembering for years to come? Probably not. It's been a couple of days since I have seen it and there are already pieces of this movie that I simply can't remember. However, the things I do remember are the charismatic characters, the light-hearted humor and adventure, and the wonderful locations. If you're looking for something to cheer you up that isn't the most challenging of movies, Maverick is not a bad choice.