![]() ![]() Eventually, he becomes a better soldier and learns how to defeat the enemy. Then, suddenly, he’s thrust into battle and dies immediately … only to find himself reliving his final day, dying in every imaginable way before magically starting back at square one. He’s a military officer who knows nothing about combat he just helps recruit soldiers for a never-ending war against unstoppable space aliens. Our man is so well-cast in this incredibly fun science-fiction comedy-thriller-adventure, it’s downright scary. ![]() Really, who better to take down the Reagan era’s dirty tricks than one of the biggest stars of that decade? -D.F. Still, you have to credit the way his Edge of Tomorrow director weaponizes that megawatt smile and golden-boy charm in the name of meta-critique. The role isn’t quite a good fit for him, despite Cruise’s best efforts to dig into this complicated man and find something to play to besides stock ugly-American smarm. What’s confusing is why Cruise was tempted to play this anti-hero maybe, like Seal himself, he was so bored by his day job (in this case, being the last real movie star left standing) that he was ready to shake things up for the hell of it. war on drugs - the chance to send up the American dream of prosperity by any means necessary while taking potshots at political hypocrisy is too good to pass up. You can see why director Doug Liman wanted to make this “based on a true lie” movie about a opportunist becoming a key player in both Pablo Escobar’s coke-fueled empire and the U.S. Soon, he’s moonlighting for the Medellin Cartel as a narco-transporter, running guns to the Contras on the sly, and getting filthy rich in the process. ( All entries written by Bilge Ebiri unless otherwise noted.)īarry Seal was a restless airline pilot who, back in the 1970s, was recruited by the C.I.A. Here are Tom Cruise’s movies, ranked from worst to best. ![]() Which ones have held up, which ones have aged badly and which ones gained new relevance? We have both a need for speed and the answers. So in light of Top Gun: Maverick – his belated sequel to the flyboy blockbuster that made him truly, global-celebrity famous – finally hitting theaters (and with a new two-part Mission: Impossible movie set to come out next year), we’re updating our list of good, great and grating Cruise-controlled movies. The star may have had us at “Hello,” but he still figured out a way to continue to be Tom Cruise™ even while expanding his range and appearing in more ambitious films. That image helped fuel such later successes as Top Gun and Cocktail, but Cruise also smartly complicated it, first in films like Born on the Fourth of July and Rain Man, and later in films like Magnolia and Minority Report. Whether he was a working class football star ( All the Right Moves) or an entitled dork ( Risky Business), he was always “Tom Cruise” - driven, laser-focused and upright, even when running a fly-by-night brothel out of his parents’ house. In his annus mirabilis of 1983, he seemed to appear fully-formed from the collective id of Reagan’s America - the then–21-year-old actor appeared in no less than four movies, and starred in three of them. Tom Cruise has been a movie star for almost 40 years now. ![]()
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