Ever since exploding onto the scene in the 1980s, Tom Cruise has remained one of the most popular actors in Hollywood. His personal life might be constant tabloid fodder, but in theaters Cruise still manages to keep us entertained. Whether he's shooting down Russian MIGs, running from or toward danger, or just being handsome and charming, Cruise rarely disappoints. And we're hoping that trend will continue this Friday when Oblivion hits theaters.
We figured the time had come to take a look at Cruise's prolific career and pick out his best films. From early efforts like Risky Business and Top Gun to '90s classics like A Few Good Men to recent favorites such as Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, these are the movies any self-respecting Tom Cruise lover needs to see.
Risky Business was the first movie to put Tom Cruise on the Hollywood map. It made the most of his 19-year-old good looks and charm, particularly in the scene where Cruise dances in his underwear to the dulcet tones of Bob Seger. Everyone knows that scene if they haven't actually seen the movie. The movie also features an equally young and attractive Rebecca De Mornay as an opportunistic prostitute.
But beyond underwear dancing, Risky Business stands out as being one of the few raunchy teen comedies from the '80s with more storytelling ambition. Whereas movies like Porkies were content to coast on nudity and hijinks, Risky Business attempted to explore the hypocrisy and absurdity of upper-middle class teen life. The message may have been diluted at times, but Risky Business is an interesting departure from the norm and a clear standout from this early period of Cruise's career.
Philip K. Dick was nothing if not a prolific science fiction writer. It's no surprise that so many of his short stories and novels have been fodder for movie adaptations over the years. But Minority Report stands out as one of the few that stuck close to the source material. Even the title stayed the same, which is more than we can say for films like Total Recall and Blade Runner.
In this futuristic sci-fi tale, Cruise plays John Anderton, the chief of a new police division called Precrime. Using a trio of psychically-inclined mutants called Precogs, Precrime is able to arrest criminals before they commit crimes. But when Anderton finds his name is next on the list, he's forced to go rogue and attempt to clear his name before he winds up committing murder.
It's a great premise that allowed for plenty of suspenseful action and scenes of Cruise running, which was becoming more and more his shtick by that point. The biggest change Minority Report made to the source material was in giving viewers a more youthful, attractive protagonist, and we didn't hear anyone complaining about that particular edit. Under Steven Spielberg's direction, Minority Report offered a thoughtful, eye-catching look at the future that was probably more precog than we'd like to believe.
It's pretty rare for a franchise to maintain its quality by the time it reaches the fourth installment. Heck, a lot of franchises fall apart once the first sequel hits and it becomes a franchise in the first place. Mission: Impossible is the rare exception. Most fans would agree that the third and fourth films are the best in the series. We're inclined to put the fourth on top, but there's certainly a case to be made for M:I III as well.
Ghost Protocol upped the ante by putting Cruise's Ethan Hunt and his fellow IMF agents on the wrong side of the law. There was a new sense of desperation to their mission as they worked both to save the day and clear their names in the wake of a terrorist attack on the Kremlin. Ghost Protocol boats some of the finest action sequences in the history of the franchise, including Hunt's death-defying climb up a skyscraper in Dubai. Cruise has a habit of throwing himself into his action roles and performing many of his own stunts. That devotion/insanity really elevated Ghost Protocol. The movie also proved that director Brad Bird has a knack for live-action films as well as animated ones. It's little wonder he's on just about everyone's short list to direct a Star Wars movie.
It's rare to see a Tom Cruise movie where the actor isn't front and center the entire time. But Cruise tried something a little different when he joined the cast of Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 drama Magnolia. Here, Cruise was one of nine main characters whose stories intertwined in the sort of complex narrative Anderson does so well. Cruise played Frank T.J. Mackey, a handsome but slightly sleazy pitchman for an infomercial about getting laid. It was a much more successful foray into the realm of sex and perversion than Cruise's previous role in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.
Between the ensemble cast and much-maligned three-hour run-time, Magnolia struggled to find an audience at theaters. But as with pretty much every P.T. Anderson film, it had no trouble with critics. In terms of Cruise's role specifically, many likened it to the revitalizing change of pace John Travolta found when he starred in Pulp Fiction. Every so often we need a reminder that Cruise can break the mold, and Magnolia certainly proved that much.
Cruise has pretty much earned his doctorate in playing attractive, charming leading men at this point. We imagine sometimes even the most hardcore Cruise lovers want to see the actor break the mold and play the bad guy for a change. Collateral wasn't the first time Cruise switched to the dark side, but it is his most memorable effort.
That's not to say the usual Cruise charm wasn't still dialed up to 11 for this movie. Collateral paired Cruise with Jamie Foxx. The latter played, Max, a humble LA cab driver with dreams of moving up in the world. The former played, Vincent, a dapper but ruthless hitman who enlisted the reluctant Max as his driver for a busy night of executions. Collateral showcased director Michael Mann's same strong visual style and love for the LA cityscape that was so apparent in Heat two decades earlier. And Cruise and Foxx enjoyed an intense dynamic as the night wore on and Max's situation became increasingly desperate. Maybe Cruise didn't veer as far from his usual self as he could have in this role, but it was still fun to see his dangerous, unhinged side slip through.
Source : ign[dot]com
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