Tom Cruise has become an action hero in recent years and people watch his movies more to see him perform death-defying stunts than for his acting ability. For this reason, he's one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood and every movie he touches turns to gold.
However, if fans dig deep enough, they'll be able to find some gems that weren't all that successful at the box office, but are still massively entertaining. Not only that, but many of them show a dramatic side to Cruise's acting that hasn't been prevalent since the 1990s.
Rock Of Ages (2012)
In the 2010s, musicals made a comeback in a big way. Movies like La La Land, The Greatest Showman, and A Star Is Born all made over $400 million each. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Rock of Ages, even though it had all of the qualities of a successful musical.
The movie had an ensemble cast, catchy tunes, it looked glamorous, and it stars Tom Cruise, but it bombed at the box office. It's one of the actor's most impressive roles to date, not because of any outrageous stunts or his acting performance, but because Tom Cruise learned to sing for the role and he ended up being great.
Far And Away (1992)
Tom Cruise is obviously best known for playing Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movies and starring in so many other huge action flicks, like the Jack Reacher series and Edge of Tomorrow. However, few fans, especially those of a younger age, know just how great of a dramatic performer the actor is too.
One of the finest examples of that is in Far and Away, one of two collaborations with his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman. The movie is an epic romantic Western in every way: it's full of panoramic vistas of the desert, has a sweeping score from John Williams, and a period setting, as it follows Irish immigrants seeking fortune in 1890s America. It's a movie that never got the attention it deserved.
Legend (1985)
Tom Cruise always seems to carefully choose the directors he works with. Before Christopher McQuarrie spearheaded the M:I series from Rogue Nation onwards, it was the actor who had a big hand in choosing directors for the movies. He has also worked with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut, Ron Howard on Far and Away, and many other renowned auteurs.
However, on occasion, Cruise might have mistakenly jumped into a project thinking enough about the filmmaker, rather than the material at hand. The science fiction auteur Ridley Scott helmed Legend, and it was coming off the one-two punch of Alien and Blade Runner. The movie ended up being a slap-dash fantasy that's rich in tone but one that many critics felt lacked depth. The sci-fi fantasy was Cruise's first major box office blunder of his career.
All The Right Moves (1983)
All The Right Moves features Cruise in another lead role early on in his career. With sports movies being so popular at the time, Cruise was quick to capitalize on that, as the 1983 movie is a by-the-numbers uplifting sports drama about American football.
The movie was, in fact, a modest success, but few people knew about the film 38 years ago and even fewer people know about it now. The movie was also overshadowed by another much more successful Cruise-led movie released in the same year, Risky Business, which was a huge hit.
Lions For Lambs (2007)
Though Cruise's biggest box office movies tend to be huge action blockbusters, Lions For Lambs is another great drama that showcases the actor's incredible range. What's more interesting is that it was released in 2007, which is long after Cruise's drama heyday of the 1990s, and the movie is the very last artifact of such a thing.
Lions For Lambs doesn't just star Tom Cruise, but also Robert Redford and Meryl Streep, and it's a war drama not unlike Born on the Fourth of July. So between the star power and the concept, it's strange that so few people have seen it, even if it was scathed by critics.
The Color Of Money (1986)
Making a sequel is one of the things Martin Scorsese only ever did once, but the one sequel he did make turned out to be one of the coolest movies of the 1980s. The Color of Money is a sequel to the 1961 film The Hustler, and it follows a professional pool player hustling other players on the pool circuit.
It's an underrated movie, and it's one that not even major fans of Scorsese talk about all that often. But though it's a Tom Cruise vehicle, Paul Newman steals the show, and he exudes just as much coolness as he did 25 years earlier.
The Outsiders (1983)
Being based on the novel of the same name, The Outsiders is about teenage gangs and is almost like a much more grounded alternative to The Warriors. The Outsiders was one of the very first movies that showcased Cruise's potential to be a movie star. In a movie full of charismatic potential leads, including Rob Lowe, Matt Dillion, and Patrick Swayze, Cruise was still the standout of the film.
But the film still wasn't the biggest movie in the world, and for a Francis Ford Coppola-directed movie, it massively underperformed. However, it might be a movie some people know even more than they want to, as the titular novel by S.E. Hinton is often taught in high school, which always comes along with endless viewings of the film adaptation.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
Romance and science fiction are a fascinating blend of genres, and it's a surprise that it's rarely done. Movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Vanilla Sky pull it off so well. However, although the Cruise-starring movie was a huge success when it was first released, it has since faded into obscurity.
Even the Spanish movie on which it's based, Open Your Eyes, is more popular now. But the Hollywood remake is worth revisiting, as Cruise's performance as a man who has it all, only for his life to be turned upside down, is so believable.
Magnolia (1999)
Magnolia is technically a Tom Cruise movie, but his screentime is shared with an ensemble cast. The film is a three-hour melodramatic epic that has a multi-stranded narrative following several different characters with major issues, and it's Cruise's best film, according to IMDb.
Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, a motivational speaker and pick-up artist. What's amazing is that Cruise's role of Frank features all of his acting methods rolled into one. The character is full of shameless bravado, he's overly dramatic, and the actor even manages to sneak a tiny stunt by doing a flip on stage.
Valkyrie (2008)
Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise have a great working relationship. The writer-director has been behind the camera on the past two M:I movies and will helm the following two movies as well. But their first collaboration was on Valkyrie.
Valkyrie is about the 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler, and McQuarrie penned the screenplay for the movie. The film is impressively staged and it's easy to get lost in the period setting, as the costume and set designs are on another level.