My Best and Worst of Tom Cruise

In “honor” of Tom Cruise staring in The Mummy, I came up with my favorite, and least favorite, films of Cruise. You see, Tom Cruise is not a good actor. That’s not something to debate. He’s horrendous. Now that alone isn’t a problem. You just need to be clever enough to choose films that fit the limited things you can do well. Arnold is also a bad actor, but he showed quite a knack (for awhile) for choosing roles that played to his strengths. Cruise has not done so well, apparently because he wants to ACT, which is odd as he also sometimes sleeps though his pictures. But that very fake intensity is the norm.

Now I can, and usually do, ignore Cruise. But with The Mummy he’s entering into my area, and his other forays into FSF&H (figure it out) have left some scars. And I love the old Universal Monsters. Its probably my favorite franchise. And I’d like to see those characters come back—not that I can figure what the hell the good people at Universal are planning (they are gothic monsters! Try a nice, intimate picture sans the world destroying CGI onslaught). But whatever they are trying to do, it shouldn’t involve Cruise. Which has made me think of him.

Now, Cruise has made a large batch of ho-hum films (Oblivion, Jack Reacher). These aren’t bad, but why watch them? I believe I asked myself that in the middle of watching Jack Reacher. And he’s made a few that seemed so stupid that I’ve never forced myself to endure (Lions for Lambs, Top Gun), so this can’t be an all encompassing list. But I’ve seen a lot. So this list will only include Cruise films I either liked, or disliked. Ones that don’t deserve that much attention I’m skipping.

A dishonorable mention to The Color of Money, which is bad, but not at the bottom of his many bad films, but needs to be mentioned as an unneeded sequel to a classic film. And another dishonorable mention for The Last Samurai. Why? Think about it.

The Good–Working Up to the Best:

Mission Impossible – It was hard for me to get past them ripping apart a very good TV show to make a less good film, but oh well, it’s a different medium, so I did get over it. And taken on it’s own, the first MI film is dim, but fun.

Edge of Tomorrow – A light weight sci-fi (not “science fiction,” “sci-fi”) actioner that’s low on brains but has some good jokes and reasonable fights. Emily Blunt helps.

Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation – Not as enjoyable as Ghost Protocol, or as meaty, but for an empty popcorn movie, it works. Nice to keep Simon Pegg around.

Legend – Cruise is terrible in this and it is only partly his fault. He is miscast in a part incorrectly written. As a whole, I can’t defend Legend. But there’s lots of like about this marvelous mess of a film: Lili’s dance; everything about Tim Curry. Choose the directors cut. Second choice is the European cut. Skip the American theatrical cut.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol – The best of the MI films. Strange to get better with the 4th. It was exciting and took itself a little less seriously, which is essential for Cruise who almost always takes himself way too seriously. It’s not going to show up on any “best all time film” lists, but as the equivalent of a roller coaster, I like it.

Knight and Day – Cruise has never been much of an actor, but he has charisma. In this film, he decided to use it. Drama is beyond him; why doesn’t he try comedy more? When he relaxes and dials back the ACTING, he’s charming. He gets to do all the stunts he seems to love while making fun of his normal work. And he and Cameron Diaz have chemistry to burn. Knight and Day is a fun spyromidy and Eugie and I watched it surprisingly often.

Interview With a Vampire – Cruise with charisma. Again, Cruise allows his natural charm to surface, but this time with a dark undercurrent and he’s quite good. Normally when I like a Tom Cruise movie, it is in spite of him, but this time it is actually because of him.

 

The Bad–Working Our Way to the Worst:

Loosing It – An 80s sex comedy with Tom Cruise and Shelley Long. What could go wrong?

Taps – I remember hating it. I can’t remember anything else about it, nor am I willing to rediscover why I hated it.

The Outsiders – Group of young actors get together and act hard—really hard. They ACT right at you. You can smell the acting.

Mission Impossible III – “Hey, these MI movies are fun. Let’s stop that. We can make one that’s no fun at all.”

Vanilla Sky – “How about if we take a questionable, but interesting foreign film and dumb it down for Americans. And lets make sure the audience has no reason to care for the jackass lead character. Yeah.”

Cocktail – My god they made a movie out of this. And my god was it stupid. Why did I watch this one? It should have been at the top of my list to skip. But I saw it, with hyper (and at the same time smarmy) Cruise flipping bottles because it was really, really important.

All The Right Moves – Less a movie and more a collection of everything wrong about ‘80s cinema. “Hey! High school football is serious!”

Eyes Wide Shut – How can you make the nudity of such beautiful people so dull? I should want to see Nicole Kidman naked. The once great Kubrick was deeply out of touch, but even if he still had some of his old talent (he didn’t), making a film where the entire point is to frustrate the audience is a bad idea. On the other hand, Cruise’s attempt to act frustrated by pounding his fist into his open palm is really funny.

Minority Report – Cruise and Spielberg join together again to abuse science fiction. What the hell were they thinking and why do they hate science fiction? The logic doesn’t work (internal consistency would be nice). The characters don’t work (unlikable and unrealistic). Nothing worked. I hate it when a SF film pretends to be smart but is this deeply stupid.

War of the Worlds – Even now, H.G. Wells is planning to return from the grave to kill everyone involved with mutilating his work. I don’t know why Spielberg and Cruise hate Wells so much but that hatred is palpable. Wells will have the last laugh. He’s coming! Yeah, yeah, it’s 9/11 fears demonstrated via Wells’s work. Isn’t that clever? No, it’s not. It’s annoying. The film does contain more blank gazing upward than any other film ever made. So…it has that. Can you like this film and also like science fiction? No. No you can not.

And now Cruise will take on a franchise that includes Frankenstein, The Bride, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, and Dracula. Some of my favorite characters and their ’40s versions were some of my favorite films. This can’t end well.