Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, but how do his films rank from worst to best? In the current age of celebrity and Hollywood, it could be argued that true A-List movie stars don't really exist anymore. With big-budget studio tentpoles defined more by their intellectual property than the actors starring in them, there are very few figures in the film industry who can make a movie a major hit based on their name alone. Most of the notable names from the past few decades have either seen their box office power wane, like Will Smith, or chosen to step away from blockbuster titles in favor of character-driven indie work, as is the case with Brad Pitt. A notable exception to this new way of life in Hollywood is Tom Cruise.
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV is an undisputed megastar. Over the course of close to 40 years, the actor has strengthened his status not only as one of the most famous men on the planet but as an enduring commercial and critical force, the likes of which Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. He got his start in bit parts and ensemble pieces but was quickly launched into the upper echelons of fame with a string of major hits that garnered him awards recognition and record-breaking box office power. Throughout the 1990s, he was utterly untouchable, an actor whose name could guarantee big profits and the avid attention of audiences around the world. Even as he established himself as a growing blockbuster force, he still picked up no fewer than three Oscar nominations. All that and he was one half of a tabloid-friendly power couple thanks to his marriage to Nicole Kidman.
By the mid-2000s, Cruise’s reputation had taken a beating. He became more publicly vocal about his dedication to the deeply controversial Church of Scientology, he lambasted psychiatry and actress Brooke Shields for using anti-depressants in interviews, and his awkward public displays of affection with new wife Katie Holmes provided the media with much fodder for mockery. Suddenly, Cruise was seen as weird, an off-kilter celebrity out-of-touch with the masses, and he became more well-known for jumping on Oprah’s couch than his movie roles. While Cruise will never regain the gleaming reputation he had in his prime, he has become more accepted by audiences as he leans further into his on-screen persona as a near-invincible force. While he’s notably stepped away from those prestige roles that made him a critics’ favorite, his focus on higher-than-high-concept action titles wherein he performs his own stunts have kept him in the public eye and won over a new legion of fans. At the age of 58, Cruise has remodeled himself into the era’s most daring action star. Here's every Tom Cruise movie, ranked.
42. The Mummy
The Dark Universe remains one of the 2010s most hilariously misguided Hollywood experiments. Universal’s attempt to relaunch their iconic monsters franchise as a Marvel-style expanded blockbuster universe crashed and burned with its first movie, The Mummy. The film tried to blend pulpy action-horror with the now-familiar Tom Cruise model of dramatic stunts and lots of running. The end result was an utterly baffling film that would have been unintentionally hilarious if it weren’t so bloated and boring. The dreary gray color palette combined with derivative plotting and an exhausting attempt to establish a multi-movie franchise that nobody cared about is a ridiculously expensive folly that nobody seemed to think was a good idea. Cruise is also bad as the bland leading man and the film breaks into pieces when it tries to bend to suit his persona. The Mummy had no business being a Tom Cruise movie in more ways than one, and it sank Universal’s expanded universe dreams.
41. Lions for Lambs
Long before anyone ever saw 2007's Lions for Lambs, the movie was decreed an Oscar winner in the making. How could it not be when it starred Cruise alongside Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, the latter of whom also sat in the director's chair? It seemed like an important movie, a stirring political drama about the futility of America's ongoing war in the Middle East. Instead, audiences got an overly-talky civics class that said a lot but nothing of substance. Built more like a play than a movie, Lions for Lambs features a handful of people having long and evidently rehearsed conversations that wouldn't feel out of place on Meet the Press. It’s one thing to preach to the choir but it’s another thing to do it so ineptly. Lions for Lambs ends up feeling like a parody of bad Oscar bait.
40. Endless Love
Cruise made his feature debut in a small role in 1981’s Endless Love, a romantic drama directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli that's now become something of a pop-culture punching bag thanks to its tawdry plot and cheesy theme song sung by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. The movie infamously botches the Scott Spencer novel it's adapted from, turning the book's story of bleak obsession into a trite teen romance that paints stalking as an act of passion. The only saving grace of the movie is James Spader bringing all his '80s sleazy charm to a pointless supporting role. Even Cruise completionists would be excused for skipping this one.
39. Losin’ It
Before he made his iconic sex comedy, Risky Business, Cruise starred in the far less acclaimed Losin' It, wherein he played a 1950s teenager who goes on a road trip to Tijuana with his friends to lose their virginity. While it is fascinating to see Cruise alongside a young Shelley Long and Jackie Earle Haley, Losin’ It does nothing that a hundred other ‘80s sex comedies didn’t do better.
38. Far and Away
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were sorely miscast as poor Irish immigrants who move to America to seek their fortune and end up participating in the Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893. While Far and Away is certainly handsomely shot and director Ron Howard is aiming hard for old-school melodrama akin to 1940s John Ford movies, it's all too simplistically drawn and lacking in depth to truly work. It doesn't help that both Cruise and Kidman are saddled with some of the worst Irish accents committed to celluloid. Cruise would prove himself in far better roles as an actor but it's tough to escape how he simply looks too clean-cut and heroic for a role like this.
37. Cocktail
1988's Cocktail is the pre-requisite Bad Tom Cruise Movie. Lambasted upon release but still a huge commercial success, the movie saw Cruise shaking up a lot of unappetizing-looking cocktails while romancing Elizabeth Shue. It may be the most '80s movie ever made and it has its bad-movie charms, but those contemporary critics weren't lying about its overall emptiness. The original screenplay reportedly changed drastically when Cruise came onboard, changing from a bleak drama about the cult of celebrity into the very thing it was deriding. It's a shame because Cruise was clearly capable of pulling off the story's original intentions.
36. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Cruise was always a strange choice to play Jack Reacher, Lee Child’s popular literary hero. In the novels, Reacher, a former military officer turned vigilante drifter, is described as being 6 foot 5 inches tall, possessing hands the size of dinner plates, and a face that looks like a "condom crammed with walnuts." Still, Cruise's first outing as the character did well enough to warrant a sequel but Never Go Back is so painfully one-note and such a step down from its predecessor that it's no wonder the burgeoning franchise came to a halt. For a movie with a reported budget of $96 million, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back looks oddly cheap, like a bargain bin thriller you'd find in a video rental store in 1997.
35. Taps
Only the second movie on Cruise's filmography, Taps follows a group of military school students who take over the building to save it from closure. It's easy to see how this concept could have been twisted into an Animal House-style comedy but Taps takes itself far too seriously and spends a lot of time talking about honor and what it means to be a hero, none of which ends up being very effective. There's some novelty in seeing Cruise essentially play the Kevin Bacon character in Animal House if he had access to hard ammo, but this one is an easy skip for Cruise fans.
34. Legend
A year before he became an action megastar with Top Gun, Cruise starred in Legend, Ridley Scott's attempt to do for cinematic fantasy what Blade Runner did for science-fiction. While the movie has its cult fanbase and can be legitimately lauded for its visuals, the paper-thin story and bland lead characters leave the final product to be far less as a whole than the sum of its parts. This is Cruise at his whiniest, not yet the charismatic figure he would evolve into over the coming years, and he doesn't have the charm or commitment yet required to make an admittedly tough character feel alive. He's blasted off the screen by the magnetism of Tim Curry as the devil.
33. All the Right Moves
Another early title in his filmography, Cruise got solid but unspectacular reviews for his performance as a high school football player trying to earn his way to a scholarship so he can escape his economically deprived small hometown and the dead-end jobs of his father and brother. Richard Corliss of Time (via Metacritic) described the film as trying "to prove itself the Flashdance of football." It's a surprisingly perfect description of what is ultimately a cliché-addled pseudo-inspirational drama that continues to be a dime a dozen in Hollywood.
32. Rock of Ages
The long-running Broadway musical Rock of Ages is the theatrical equivalent of a boozy karaoke session in an '80s-themed bar, which is where its bawdy, self-aware charm lies. The 2012 film adaptation possesses none of that cheesy allure. Its transfer to the big screen feels tone-deaf and lifeless thanks to predictable directorial choices by Adam Shankman. What feels charming on-stage lands with a thud on film, especially given how few of the major stars seem capable of singing these classic rock numbers. Cruise is actually really fun in the role of the lead Rockstar, even if his crooning leaves something to be desired. Whenever he's on-screen, it's refreshing to see the infamously intense actor let loose and enjoy himself.
31. The Color of Money
While Cruise shared top billing in The Color of Money, the film is undeniably a star vehicle for his co-star, the legendary Paul Newman, who reprised his role as Fast Eddie Felson from The Hustler. The movie mostly existed to finally won Newman his long-awaited Oscar, and everyone involved seemed to understand that. Despite having Martin Scorsese on board as a director, the film feels highly by-the-numbers, despite Newman’s endless charisma, the likes of which Cruise would heavily borrow from as his own career progressed.
30. Days of Thunder
The premiere of Days of Thunder was intended to be a very big deal. Cruise was reuniting with Top Gun director Tony Scott and that movie's mega-powered producer duo Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, and this was the movie where Cruise met Nicole Kidman. The film wasn't the commercial record-breaker they hoped it would be, but Days of Thunder did inadvertently establish the creation of Roger Ebert's formula for The Tom Cruise Picture. In that sense, despite its failings – overtly-saccharine narrative, bad dialogue, derivative pot – the film is pivotal in Cruise’s evolution as a star. Days of Thunder is best enjoyed as a time capsule not only of 1990 – including music by the lead singer of Whitesnake – but of an era of cinema that stood on the precipice of immense change, a lot of which would be led by Cruise himself.
29. Vanilla Sky
It says something about Cruise’s commercial power in 2001 that he could star in a remake of a trippy Spanish sci-fi thriller that received mediocre reviews and still have it gross over $200 million worldwide. Vanilla Sky is nowhere near as good as the film it's adapted from, Abre los Ojos, but it's also too thematically jumbled to stand on its own two feet. You can't fault director Cameron Crowe's ambition but his reach greatly exceeds his grasp, even with a strong cast that includes a scene-stealing Cameron Diaz. The film does possess some astounding moments, however, such as the still-unnerving sight of a deserted Times Square.
28. Mission: Impossible 2
While it was still the highest-grossing movie of 2000, the second installment of the Mission: Impossible franchise is easily the series' weak spot. Director John Woo brings a lot of his typical bombast to the project, which fits with the self-aware absurdity of these films, but M:I2 is an emptier experience than what came before and after. Dougray Scott is the franchise's least threatening villain by far and while the action remains impressive, there’s nothing else in the movie to keep it tethered. All that and it features music by Limp Bizkit.
27. Knight and Day
2010's Knight and Day takes every turn you expect it to. It's the cinematic equivalent of candy floss: Fun but utterly frivolous, even with Cruise giving it his all as a vaguely demented secret agent on the run from the CIA. It's aiming for the rom-com crime caper tone of something like Charade or Romancing the Stone but Cruise's chemistry with Cameron Diaz works better in purely platonic terms. There are thrills to be had here and director James Mangold can make movies like this in his sleep, but there's nothing particularly unique or intriguing about Knight and Day, especially when you compare it to the plethora of better movies in Cruise's filmography that follow similar lines.
26. Oblivion
In terms of pure aesthetic, Oblivion is a marvel. That's no surprise given that the director, Joseph Kosinski, made his debut with the equally visually lavish TRON: Legacy. Its view of a future Earth devastated by an alien war, almost bleached white by the distress, is one that looks gorgeous in practically every scene. Aside from that, however, the film itself is a much weaker affair. It's overall still extremely enjoyable and there's real merit in Cruise working on a wholly original sci-fi movie at a time when franchises are king. When it takes a step away from being just another Hollywood movie, Oblivion comes alive, but it doesn't happen anywhere near enough throughout its two-hour running time.
25. Valkyrie
Cruise's casting as Wehrmacht Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leading members of the failed 20 July plot of 1944 to assassinate Hitler, in Bryan Singer's Valkyrie was met with major controversy. While he did bear a strong resemblance to the Colonel, he still felt too classically American for the part. It's hard to forget that you're watching Tom Cruise, even though the rest of the film remains compelling and smoothly constructed, helped along by a sturdy cast that includes Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Carice van Houten, and Eddie Izzard.
24. Tropic Thunder
After his pro-Scientology crusades saw his public reputation take a beating, Cruise scraped back some much-needed goodwill by taking a small but hilarious role in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. With a heavy paunch and tacky combover, Cruise has a ball as Les Grossman, a sleazy studio executive who more than lives up to his name. The best moments of the movie come when it mercilessly lampoons the worst excesses of Hollywood and the gargantuan egos who run it, but all too often the film gets overwhelmed by its big-budget and need to show the money on-screen at every possible moment.
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23. Jack Reacher
Despite his obvious miscasting, Cruise made his first appearance as Jack Reacher work thanks to a combination of grit, focus, and a willingness to drastically decrease his own charm. Still, it's hard to overcome how much of an ill fit Cruise is for Reacher, even though he's working overtime to make it happen. At least the surrounding drama is exciting enough, with none other than legendary director Werner Herzog paying a fascinating villain.
22. Mission: Impossible III
With 2006's Mission: Impossible III, the franchise seemed to be entering into a solid formula that it could milk for endless future installments. The action is bombastic, the plotting absurd, and Ethan Hunt's expanded narrative gives him room for some much-needed emotional drive. Contemporary criticisms said the movie felt stale in the aftermath of the burgeoning popularity of Jason Bourne and the James Bond reboot, but in hindsight, that feels unfair to MI:3. Cruise's confidence in the lead role is striking and the inclusion of a truly unnerving Philip Seymour Hoffman as the latest villain elevates the film above its immediate predecessor. Things, however, only got better from this point on for the franchise.
21. The Firm
In the '90s, adaptations of John Grisham's legal thrillers became hot currency in Hollywood, and 1993's The Firm was a key part in making that trend happen. Cruise plays Mitch McDeere, a promising Harvard-educated tax lawyer with boatloads of ambition who dreams of working on Wall Street and making his fortune. Those plans are complicated when he uncovers evidence of mass tax fraud and money laundering that involves one of the deadliest crime families in America. The Firm is the sort of sturdy, classic studio courtroom thrillers that the industry doesn't bother to make anymore (or leaves to TV procedurals like Law and Order.) The leading role is such a natural fit for Cruise, who radiates a level of golden age leading-man energy that became his bread and butter as a movie-star. He's sincere but cocky, driven but with an undeniable strain of idealism despite his initial cynicism.
20. The Last Samurai
It's near-impossible nowadays for historical dramas to be given the big-budget star-vehicle treatment, so there's something almost classically appealing about seeing Cruise headline 2003's The Last Samurai, a handsomely mounted tale of a United States captain hired to help wipe out the Samurai who ends up changing sides amid the westernization of Japan. Director Ed Zwick tries to find more nuanced ground for his film than past American depictions of historical Japan, and he does shoot some beautifully composed action scenes. The attention to aesthetic detail is especially breath-taking, as is the Oscar-nominated performance of Ken Watanabe. Still, the film struggles to escape its deeply-embedded socio-cultural context, falling prey to the White Savior trope as well as an overtly-romantic take on the Samurai that many Japanese critics took issue with.
19. American Made
Doug Liman's American Made was an attempt to blend together a gritty 1970s-style anti-hero drama with the typical flash-bang of a Tom Cruise movie. It surprisingly works. Cruise plays Barry Seal, a commercial airline pilot who became a drug smuggler for a major Colombian cartel. Cruise has long stopped even trying to downplay his star power for whatever role he is in and instead adheres the material to his inimitable force of personality, and it proves to be a striking fit for American Made, where his enduring boyish charm plays well against the coke-addled desperation of a man who has gotten in way over his head.
18. Mission: Impossible
It’s doubtful that anyone involved with the long-awaited big-screen remake of the classic ‘60s spy series Mission: Impossible knew what a bright and surprisingly enduring legacy it would leave behind. At the time, the film was simply another way for Cruise to flex his A-List muscles and bring to life a show he loved as a kid. In comparison to what would follow, Brian De Palma's film is a much smaller scale espionage drama, with the biggest thrills coming from micro-moments, like a drop of sweat or a fish tank. It's the most traditional thriller in the bunch, with a healthy helping of red herrings, misdirection, and endless double-crossing, but it’s also suitably bonkers, as evidenced by that final chase involving a train and a helicopter.
17. War of the Worlds
It was a stroke of genius for Steven Spielberg to cast Cruise as the everyman in his adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. Even when he’s the biggest star on the planet at the peak of his fame, he manages to feel achingly real as a single dad whose disconnection from his kids is heightened during an alien invasion. He’s no hero with a plan and he doesn’t save the day. He just needs to survive, even if that means tossing aside one’s better judgment. War of the Worlds remains one of the 2000s’ best depictions of post-9/11 paranoia in American society and provides a devastatingly sharp commentary on the ultimate futility of the then-ongoing War on Terror. Sadly, it fails to stick the landing and that disappointment continues to be one of the darker spots in Spielberg’s filmography.
16. A Few Good Men
Rob Reiner's adaptation of the play by a pre-West Wing Aaron Sorkin is now the stuff of pop-culture parody thanks to endlessly quoted moments like, "You can't handle the truth." The many mocked moments of A Few Good Men do nothing to quash its sheer verve, especially on the screenplay level. Cruise and Jack Nicholson are a fiery duo facing up one another in the courtroom. It's a simple story told incredibly well and it lingers long in the imagination even after the pithy one-liners have been driven into the ground. Cruise is such a good fit for this style of spitfire dialogue that you can’t help but wonder why he doesn’t do movies like this more often.
15. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
By the time the Mission: Impossible franchise expanded beyond a trilogy, Cruise and company seemed all too ready to turn their tried-and-tested formula all the way up to eleven. In terms of unadulterated spectacle, Ghost Protocol signaled a new age of Mission: Impossible, one of such scale and ambition that you couldn't help but wonder how the hell Cruise was getting away with it. Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, is maybe the perfect franchise moment: Unbearably tense, hugely impressive on a technical level, and still enjoyably silly, with Cruise bring some much-appreciated harried energy to his increasingly invincible Ethan Hunt.
14. The Outsiders
Cruise has been heavily defined throughout his career by his slick and polished persona, so it remains something of a surprise to see him looking so rough around the edges and barely ready for primetime in The Outsiders. Based on the novel by S.E. Hinton, published when the author was 18 years old, and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the drama about a group of tough teens from the wrong side of the tracks featured a veritable murderer's row of hot young talent: Cruise, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, and Emilio Estevez, to name but a few. Cruise stands out in a small role and it's probably one of the last moments in his career where he could get away with playing this sort of street rat character. The film as a whole is a stellar adaptation of the novel, capturing the naturalistic approach to the narrative as well as the ways that young people interacted with one another during that time. It's certainly one of Coppola's more underrated efforts.
13. Rain Man
Dustin Hoffman may have the juicier role in this drama about a huckster and his autistic savant brother that gobbled up all the Oscars that year, but in hindsight, it’s Cruise who has the much tougher part to play. As Charlie Babbitt, the selfish jerk who repeatedly manipulates his brother and forces him into various schemes, Cruise has to tread an extremely taught tightrope between callous and cool. He's a desperate man fuelled by anger and resentment who has to learn how to care for someone other than himself. In the wrong hands, Rain Man would have become something far more saccharine or unbalanced. As it is, the pure force of the Cruise-Hoffman double team brings real humanity to this now-overtly-familiar style of drama. Cruise had proven himself before as a dramatic actor but Rain Man showed he could pull it off while still remaining a top-grade movie-star.
12. Jerry Maguire
Released the same year as the first Mission: Impossible film, the one-two punch of that and Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire made 1996 feel like the official crowning of Cruise as King of Hollywood. This is as close as Cruise got to making a traditional romantic comedy and he excels in the role of the charm-ridden sports agent who gains a conscience and tries to strike it out on his own, accompanied only by his star client and the luminescent Renée Zellweger. Cruise is truly hilarious as a guy who is so used to skating through life on pure charisma but now is constantly on the verge of losing it as he tries to scrape together a new life and career. Cameron Crowe never really topped this film (although Almost Famous came close) and Cruise was seldom this loveable again.
11. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
One of Cruise's most important collaborative relationships has been with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, who Cruise first worked with on Valkyrie. McQuarrie did a number of uncredited rewrites on Ghost Protocol before stepping in to direct its sequel. To date, he's the only director to have made more than one Mission: Impossible movie, a notable change of pace for a franchise that was becoming increasingly defined by its willingness to change up filmmakers with each new movie. Clearly, Cruise and McQuarrie get one another when it comes to the continuing escapades of Ethan Hunt. Rogue Nation, number five in the series, ups the character work, develops the core ensemble further, and is so jam-packed with showstopping moments that could have easily filled out a few more movies. The opera house scene is a real standout, in large part thanks to the introduction of Rebecca Ferguson as a femme fatale with a twist. With Rogue Nation, it felt like the franchise had reached a new peak. Little did fans know that the best was yet to come.
10. Minority Report
Cruise’s first collaboration with Spielberg seems like pretty typical fare for both of them on the surface: A high-concept action thriller with plenty of opportunities for twists, turns, and set-pieces to astound. Minority Report, however, is a far more slippery creature, a fascinatingly paranoid sci-fi tale of free will versus determinism that sharply captures the endless constraints of living in a world of ceaseless surveillance and an overpowered police force. Cruise gets a chance to bring more tragic layers to his traditional action hero arc (and he runs a lot, which is always exciting) and Samantha Morton offers one of the most interesting and overlooked performances in any Spielberg movie.
9. Risky Business
The film that fully introduced Cruise to the masses, Risky Business is one of the best of the long line of sex comedies that permeated the landscape of 1980s pop culture. It’s not hard to see why the movie launched Cruise into the upper echelons of Hollywood. As the promising student turned entrepreneur-slash-pimp, he’s devastatingly charming in a way that only teenage boys in the movies get to be. His transformation into the kind of guy who turns his family home into a brothel is a sly satire of the burgeoning “greed is good” culture that would come to wholly define the ‘80s. Risky Business remains deeply problematic – its portrayal of trans women and sex workers is, to put it mildly, of its time – but in terms of pure importance in Cruise’s career narrative, it’s impossible to overlook. Few moments define Cruise as a megastar as much as him sliding into the room in his briefs and open shirt as he mimes to "Old Time Rock and Roll."
8. Magnolia
While even director Paul Thomas Anderson now admits that 1999's Magnolia is too long - and it does try even avid PTA fans' patience at a gargantuan 188 minutes - it remains a startling masterpiece of ambition and emotion. Near-operatic in scale, this mosaic story of interconnected characters searching for meaning in their lives veers between classic Hollywood melodrama and biblical allegory in ways that only Anderson at his cockiest could ever pull off. Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, a pickup artist whose stirring yet deeply misogynist speeches rile up the men he's selling his methods to. His profanity-laden introductory speech is one of Cruise's best moments as an actor, and it's made all the better by the contrast of him slowly breaking down into just another guy struggling to deal with his daddy issues.
7. Collateral
Cruise plays a lot of heroes and he's done more than his fair share of anti-heroes but when it comes to full-blown villains, those are much harder to find in his filmography. That's a shame because Michael Mann's Collateral, which sees him playing a cold-hearted hitman, offers him one of his meatiest roles to date. Few directors make L.A. noirs as skilfully as Mann and Collateral is one that feels familiar yet utterly alien as Jamie Foxx drives his cab through the city helping to aid Cruise’s plan. Cruise and Foxx are electric together and their cat-and-mouse game makes for the film’s most effective thrills. It’s not on the level of Heat, Mann’s masterpiece, but Collateral is similarly excellent in how it rejuvenates what could have been a retread of a dozen other stories of similar plots into a fresh and unnerving final product.
6. Interview With the Vampire
When Cruise was announced as one of the two leads in the long-awaited adaptation of the first book in Anne Rice’s wildly influential Vampire Chronicles, fans revolted at what was seen as an egregious example of Hollywood miscasting. Even Rice herself publicly lambasted the choice. She’s not wrong: In practically every way, Cruise is wrong for the role of Lestat, and yet he’s also kind of brilliant in the final product. Despite it all, he is perfect as the smarmy brat prince of the vampires in Neil Jordan’s sumptuous imagining of Rice’s deeply passionate book. The film manages to be almost as opulent as the novel, glorying in the heightened emotional and stylistic frenzy of this story of vampires grappling with the mystery of eternal life. What makes the film sing is Cruise’s savvy understanding of Lestat himself: He’s a cruel imp of a man but one whose zest for life is contagious, even as he murders with impunity and dances with the corpse. It’s a shame we never got to see him reprise the role for the follow-up novels.
5. Edge of Tomorrow
For an actor so heavily defined by their coolness and unflappable action prowess, Cruise is at his most appealing when he’s playing men who seem constantly baffled by their surroundings. Edge of Tomorrow is the most thrilling and hilarious version of this trope, with Cruise playing a soldier forced to live (and die) the same day over and over while he tries to figure out why he’s stuck in this aggravating time loop. It’s amazing how much humor and inventiveness is mined from this repetition, and Cruise is ably matched with Emily Blunt, who plays one of the best action heroines of the past decade. It’s delightful to see Blunt play the stoic hard-bitten war hero while Cruise is the clumsy coward who constantly needs saving (or a bullet to the head.)
4. Top Gun
It’s easy to critique the faults of Top Gun, the movie that cemented Cruise’s status as the star of the moment and the foreseeable future. Is it cheesy? Of course, but director Tony Scott is full-throated in his commitment to this high-octane story of male bonding against the backdrop of the endlessly competitive culture of the American military. It's a rare movie that celebrates its peacock-strutting and deeply sexualized version of masculinity without ever descending into gaudy misogyny, and Cruise’s romance with Kelly McGillis is one of the most chemistry-laden pairings in his career. All those cheesier moments now feel like a glorious time capsule of self-aware enjoyment, including those giddily homoerotic volleyball games set to Kenny Loggins singing "Playing with the Boys." That one-two-three punch of Scott, Don Simpson, and Jerry Bruckheimer would go on to wholly redefine the face of '80s cinema in a way that resonates even in 2020. The aerial scenes alone remain electrifying. There's a reason that, almost 25 years later, Cruise was so keen to return to Maverick for the upcoming Top Gun sequel. They don't make them like this anymore, but perhaps Top Gun: Maverick can make lightning strike twice.
3. Eyes Wide Shut
Contemporary critics of Stanley Kubrick’s final film seemed almost disappointed that Eyes Wide Shut wasn’t a more evidently lurid erotic drama or, at the very least, thinly veiled Cruise/Kidman fanfiction. Many derided it as cold and disappointingly unsexy, seemingly forgetting that this detached and obtuse approach to the subject of relationships and obsession was the entire point. In the context of Cruise’s mighty career, it feels especially intriguing. It’s a level of creative and personal boldness he seldom strives for with his work these days, although you can't blame him for not wanting to repeat the drama of making Eyes Wide Shut (the shoot was notoriously over 400 days long). Even at a languidly paced 159 minutes running time, Kubrick maintains an icy unease that is at turns primal and clinical. Rare for a Hollywood movie on this scale and with such major actors in the lead role, this is a movie that takes sex completely seriously. Even then, it’s less about sex than it is about power, and the near-mythic accruement of power at that. Critics have since come around on Eyes Wide Shut and now appreciate it for the obvious masterpiece that it is.
2. Born on the Fourth of July
Cruise earned the first of his three Oscar nominations thanks to his transformative turn as Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's stirring biographical drama Born on the Fourth of July. Kovic, a former Vietnam veteran turned anti-war activist, is brought to life by Cruise in his best dramatic performance. He's impassioned, angry, and often agonizing to watch in his depiction of a man who goes from idealistic patriot to furious veteran to righteous campaigner tormented by his past. As is befitting a Stone movie, it's a fiercely political affair but one that never sacrifices its humanity in favor of histrionics. Stone strips bare the myth of war as a glorious act by showing not only its barbaric reality but the glistening fantasy sold to naïve young men by a crooked political system. Cruise has historically played it safe as a movie star, a couple of notable exceptions aside, but this remains his bravest most radical project, having lost none of its potency in the three decades since its release.
1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
The sixth and, as of the writing of this piece, most recent Mission: Impossible movie feels like the culmination not only of 25 years of this franchise but of 40 years of Tom Cruise’s acting career. Everything just works in Fallout, the entire operation running with the detail and sophistication of a Swiss watch. Despite the bar being set dizzyingly high by Rogue Nation, the action set-pieces are even more mind-boggling here. Not a moment of the movie is wasted and it retains its wit and vibrancy even after five films and all these years of changes. Cruise himself is on unbeatable form, bringing a dash of agitated humanity to Ethan Hunt and warmth in his banter with his now firmly established team. It’s not just that Mission: Impossible – Fallout is the best Tom Cruise movie, the epitome of what he stands for and why people still love him despite all the drama: It may be one of the best action films ever made.