As Top Gun: Maverick soars into theaters, we take a career-spanning look at Cruise’s filmography.
Like John Travolta inPulp Fiction, this cautiously packaged movie star is liberated by risky business.
That’s the question that courses through nearly every scene ofJerry Maguire.
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America’s favorite star is still on smiling Cruise control, but now he finesses it into a dance.
He seduces then steps back; he turns on the charm then lets it slide into pools of doubt.
It’s Cruise’s deftest performance yet as a slickster grasping for the decency in himself."
Tom Cruise in ‘Jerry Maguire’.Columbia Tri Star/Kobal/Shutterstock
“We have the tripods.
We have the red weed growing all over.
But I never thought of doing it as a period piece at the turn of the century.
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It just wasn’t an interesting way to go.
I just can’t stand the styles of that time.”
“The minute I read the script, I knew I had to do it,” he says.
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“It’s not just a movie about aliens.
It’s a story…about a dad and his kids and their struggle to survive.
It’s really a very small, emotional movie.”
Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun: Maverick’.Paramount Pictures
We have to buy the fact that he can outmanipulate a master manipulation.
And damned if Cruise doesn’t bring it off.
His performance has rhythm and verve.
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And in the air up there, he stands alone."
Leah Greenblatt
Collateral (2004): B+
“Tom Cruise is a baaaad man.
At least he plays one in Michael Mann’s new movie.
David James/Warner Bros.
But Blunt is given the chance to shine as the bare-knuckle badass Rita.
And she takes to the role like the second coming of Ripley.
She may need Cruise’s time-bending gifts, but he needs her guts and smarts more.
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In a way,Edge of Tomorrowends up being a deliciously subversive kind of blockbuster.”
For all its trickery and bravura,Mission: Impossibleremains a quizzical, impersonal toy."
Nathan Algren into an approximation, a model, an avatar of a Western-born, Eastern-trained warrior.
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Cue the trumpets."
Cruise turns out to be the film’s secret weapon.
But it’sjustgood enough to keep you curious about what comes next."
Twentieth Century Studios
He’s too guilty to act."
Cruise does much better.
They’re mannequins, too false to be archetypes.
David James/Warner Bros.
Our emotional responses are cued by the editing and music rather than by anything the charactersdo.
The answer, I’m afraid, is not very much.
Cruise has always been at his worst when he has to express the inner anguish of his being.
MGM
Instead of provoking sympathy, the ugly-duckling nightmare only heightens our awareness of Cruise’s vanity."
Owen Gleiberman
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Tom Cruise in ‘Eyes Wide Shut’.Moviestore/Shutterstock
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