Finest Cruise performance, but best Cruise movie (which is why Tropic Thunder and The Outsiders are ranked highly even though Cruise isn’t the star) is what matters. And no, even if they have their moments, I’m not a huge admirer of Top Gun, A Few Good Men, or Jerry Maguire.
Jerry Maguire
Jerry Maguire, like many other Cruise movies, is almost more famous for its memorable sequences and one-liners than the movie itself. However, under the commotion surrounding the phrases “You complete me” and “Show me the money!” lurks one of Cruise’s greatest and most poignant movies. Jerry Maguire, a writer-director film starring Cameron Crowe at his most Billy Wilderian, is a story about a cynical sports agent (Cruise at his most successful) who has an epiphany and starts searching for something that may be compared to a soul. It is frequently heartwarming, inspirational, and deeply romantic.
It’s adorable and endearing beyond belief, particularly when Jerry develops feelings for his former secretary Dorothy (Renée Zellweger gives a breakthrough role). However, there’s a bittersweet underbelly that goes unnoticed, and the seemingly happy resolution could just be a band-aid solution for a seriously broken heart. Nevertheless, Cameron and Cruise will have you at “You had me at hello”.
A Few Good Men
The greatest of all the Tom Cruise legal thrillers from the 1990s is A Few Good Men. When Lt. Daniel Kaffee, a Naval lawyer who is more interested in baseball than his own cases, takes on the case of a Marine slain in Guantanamo Bay, he transforms from a smarmy pencil pusher into someone who uncovers wrongdoing in the armed services that will all too easily be hushed up.
He must battle Jack Nicholson’s menacing Colonel Jessop alongside fellow attorneys JoAnne Galloway (Demi Moore) and Sam Weinberg (Kevin Pollak) in order to establish the truth in a court of law. The cast is great, but Cruise steals the show as he portrays Kaffee’s growing desperation and commitment to win the case, prove that he can handle the truth, and grow as a person in the process of seeking justice. His intensity perfectly complements Aaron Sorkin’s rich dialogue, which Rob Reiner’s sharp directing elegantly captures.
Top Gun: Maverick
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An additional A new writer and director, 36 years in the making, plagued by pandemic-related release date postponements, and the sequel to one of the most adored action films of a generation? Maverick has a lot to prove in Top Gun. It takes off and soars higher, quicker, and much higher than anyone could have imagined. With decades of experience pushing the limits of action filmmaking, director Joseph Kosinski, along with Cruise and collaborator Christopher McQuarrie (who is writing this time), return to the cockpit and deliver breathtaking aerial acrobatics that will leave you speechless and wanting to punch the air with joy.
Similar to Tony Scott’s original, the character work is just as rich as the stunts. Cruise effortlessly channeled Maverick’s roguish charm, evoking the effect of years of stress from his superiors and grief over Goose, while also perfectly evoking his ever-present overconfidence cracking just a little. After all these years, it’s evident that Cruise felt compelled to return to Top Gun, and it’s understandable why.
Collateral
One of the actor’s greatest assholes, Cruise plays Vincent (we never find out his last name), a silver-haired, intensely focused assassin who follows Jamie Foxx’s reticent and amiable cab driver, Max, into a murderous mayhem that is akin to Michael Mann. As he drives around in the back of Max’s taxi, giving victims hot takes and even hotter leads, Cruise is sleek and cool but also sociopathic and callous. However, what’s really amazing is how he slowly and painstakingly captures Vincent’s loss of control as the night starts to run away from him. He ought to play more grade-A shits, honestly.
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
To be honest, a list of Tom Cruise’s best films might easily include several Mission: Impossible flicks. The sheer diversity of the remainder of his career might be overwhelmed if we did so (as we have opted not to), yet in a sense, Mission is Cruise’s career. Fallout is the perfect example of how the Mission saga evolved into a stunt-filled action masterclass with each new installment, as the protagonist goes to ever-higher extremes to deliver visceral delights to the general public. It is filled with incredible set pieces that deliberately highlight the fact that the main character is actually performing stunts like jumping off roofs, piloting a helicopter down a ravine, and making a HALO jump in one take.
It creates for thrilling cinema that leaves one feeling as though practically every other performance in town lacks the same level of spectacle. The writer-director duo of Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie is still a terrific match, bringing style and a fast-paced action sequence to the stunts. This is the pinnacle of both the mission and Cruise’s own cinematic journey, one that seems to never really end.