Tom Cruise is having a moment. Well, he has had about four decades of a moment. But right now, he is on a press junket for his new film, Digger (which is a movie that intrigues me to no end), and he is seemingly everywhere. He is GQ‘s new cover man, he was at the Chiefs’ game on Monday Night Football sitting next to Taylor Swift, and he just launched a campaign for a Days of Thunder sequel. The man is on fire. And he is giving interviews for the first time in two decades, which makes sense, given that he is guarded; the last time he let people into his personal life, it was an atom bomb to his image. But, with Digger about to hit theaters and seeing his face everywhere, there is no better time to go on a binge of the best of the best from the world’s last mega movie star.
NOTE: I am not listing sequels. Anything that has sequels or is part of a franchise is listed as one. Otherwise, Mission: Impossible would just be my list.
Top Gun (1986)
Any list of the best Tom Cruise movies has to begin with Top Gun. This feels like the beginning of the movie star. The launching of the myth. With the most apropo call sign for his character, Maverick, he is the guy who is unpredictable, undependable, and somehow the best of the best. This was his coming-out party, even with movies like Risky Business and Outsiders dropping before this; Top Gun showed the world that Cruise was going to be the biggest name for years to come.
Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
After the huge success of Top Gun, Cruise gave an interview with Playboy where he said that making a sequel to that high-flying thrill ride would be irresponsible. He was afraid kids would see war as an amusement park ride and not a true representation. His fix? Born on the Fourth of July, a deep dive into the journey a broken man faces after the hellish landscape of war sends him back home unable to walk. Cruise goes from naive boy with patriotic ends to a staunch antiwar activist, earning him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
A Few Good Men (1992)
Another must. This was the coming-out party for Aaron Sorkin. If you don’t know that name, he is the guy behind The West Wing, Newsroom, and The Social Network. He is the kind of writer who makes you think without having to make you lose the entertainment. A Few Good Men started as a play, and built to such renown that they grabbed the biggest star of the day and put him in the lead. Opposite of him? It was only the legend, Jack Nicholson. Screaming the words “You can’t handle the truth!” If someone asks you for the truth on something and you don’t scream this back, you’re simply not living life. Surrounding those two leads is a bevy of stars: Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Kevin Pollack, Xander Berkley, and Noah Wiley. Is this everyone involved’s best movie? It is a contender.
The Firm (1993)
Just over a decade after jumping into the business, Tom Cruise was a star on the rise. And right after the smash that was A Few Good Men, he involved himself in another collection of legends. Sure, you had Hal Holbrook, Gary Busey, Holly Hunter, David Strathairn, and Tobin Bell before he started setting traps for people as Jigsaw. But you also saw Tom Cruise sit across the table from one of the greatest of all time, the late Gene Hackman. While they both chewed up the screen, they brought to life the words of another living legend, John Grisham. The Firm is one of the best legal thrillers in print and on screen of all time, but it was the second straight time he played a lawyer, so he had to break that typecast possibility.
Mission: Impossible (1996 – 2025)
And break that typecast he did. How did he break it? He became America’s answer to James Bond. While across the pond MGM focused on suave spycraft with gadgets from Q-Branch, Paramount Pictures got the world’s craziest actor to anchor a franchise of high-flying stunts that got bigger and better for thirty years. From hanging on a rope over a pressure-sensitive floor to actually dangling off the side of the tallest building in the world, Tom Cruise completely changed how action movies were done. The weird part? Nobody really followed in his footsteps. I wonder why nobody else is willing to hang off the side of a plane…the unanswerable question.
Jerry Maguire (1996)
That same year that Tom Cruise became America’s James Bond, he dropped the first romantic comedy that actually spoke to guys too. While there was a stigma back in the 90s that only women wanted to watch the rom-com genre, Tom Cruise, Renee Zellweger, and Cuba Gooding Jr. made it cool for everyone. Sure, we all screamed “Show me the money!” for years after, but there were also zero men who didn’t walk out of that movie thinking that being a sports agent may be the coolest job on the planet.
Minority Report (2002)
We have action. We have drama. We have military. We have Romantic Comedy. We have an Oscar nod. What are we missing? Science Fiction. And who better to pull inspiration from than Phillip K. Dick? Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, The Adjustment Bureau, Next, and Paycheck are all inspired by this brilliant mind. In this thriller, Cruise plays a cop using “precogs” who can tell the future, arresting people before they commit a crime. Colin Ferrell comes onto the scene when Cruise himself is said to be on the path to murder, and one of the best cat-and-mouse games of the 2000s is underway.
The Last Samurai (2003)
Before you get all up in arms, if you think this is a white savior movie or a movie whitewashed with a white man playing an Asian character, then watch the movie. Couldn’t be further from the truth. This is, in my opinion, the movie Cruise should have won an Academy Award for. A man broken by war (again), a legendary Civil War hero, gets captured while teaching Western warfare to the Japanese. In a battle against the remaining samurai holding onto the old ways of doing things, he becomes a prisoner of war and falls in love with the peaceful honor of his captors. And the true last samurai, Ken Watanabe.
Collateral (2004)
What could possibly be left? Oh yeah, he has to play the villain. So what does Tom Cruise do? He plays the villain better than anyone around. As a deadly assassin paying Jamie Fox to drive him around all night to commit his crimes, he is manipulative, brutal, and downright terrifying. I don’t know how many people played a villain better than Tom Cruise in my lifetime, but there aren’t many. Two? Three? Either way, this was the most surprising of his career up to this point.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Blending his talents for action from Mission: Impossible and sci-fi from Minority Report, we get the criminally underrated Edge of Tomorrow. A man with little fighting skills, making him expendable, is dropped into a suicide mission only to find himself inexplicably trapped in a time loop where he relives the same mission over and over and over. While this may sound like a bang-bang shoot ’em up version of Groundhog Day, he gets more and more skilled and gets to relive the day with Emily Blunt…so it doesn’t actually sound too bad if you ask me.
Honorable Mentions
Don’t curse me out if you didn’t see your favorite in the top ten. Hell, there were at least seven more I could have put on this list. But here are three that I hated to leave off the list but just barely missed the cut.
Tropic Thunder (2008)
Between Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., there is no way someone could steal the show, right? Wrong. Tom Cruise tries his hand at comedy, and he is inexplicably perfect. Rex Grossman is one of the best characters of the decade, and he may be getting his own spin-off soon. Why did this one miss the list? Because it is more of a glorified cameo.
Jack Reacher (2012)
I will defend this movie until the day I die. Jack Reacher is one of the best literary characters of the last three decades. And while Alan Ritchson plays the perfect iteration of him because he is massive, Cruise captures the essence of the character in a way that Ritchson still reaches for. Cruise owns the room. He is intimidating and brilliant. And, my own little Reacher criticism, it makes little sense that someone would see a 6’4″ 350-pound behemoth and pick a fight with him, which they do in every book. But, Cruise? Definitely possible. Why did it miss the list? Controversy. Fans revolted that he didn’t have the size of the character.
Interview with a Vampire (1994)
Finally, last but not least, we have the Anne Rice adaptation that made her a household name. Why did this miss the list? Well, because this is a niche film that feels more like a Brad Pitt movie than a Tom Cruise movie. But man, he chewed up the screen in ways nobody could. And talk about breaking away from the typecast…he completely transformed in this one.
