Tom Cruise is undeniably one of Hollywood’s greatest action stars. Committed to the art of stunt performance, the fearless movie icon does most of his own action scenes. When you see Cruise leaping from building to building, or hanging off a Dubai skyscraper in the Mission: Impossible films, it’s actually him. It’s not a stunt double. And there’s no green screen trickery.
He’s so dedicated to creating death-defying sequences for real that in the movie Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise shot inside real F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets with U.S. Navy pilots at the controls. While he wasn’t allowed to fly them himself despite being a qualified pilot, he does fly the P-51 propeller-driven fighter plane seen in the movie.
It’s clear, Cruise doesn’t do things by halves when it comes to his action movies. He’s managed to compile quite the list of war wounds for his troubles too. Yet, while the actor is currently working on the second part of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, which will be released in 2025, there’s a nagging feeling his current focus on action-adventure is starving audiences of his equally enthralling character-based drama.
Is Cruise now only concerned with epic action cinema?
Cruise is a very good actor. It might be fun watching him cling to the side of an airplane in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation but it’s also just as compelling seeing him showing vulnerability as a husband dealing with the bitter breakdown of his marriage in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Eyes Wide Shut.
Indeed, all his acting Oscar nominations have come for his comparatively more reserved dramatic performances (in Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia). It makes a good case that his best movies aren’t his action-adventure epics.
His recent work suggests Cruise is now more focused on grand action cinema than ever before. But when you start to consider his truly great performances, you’re drawn to films like Rain Man alongside Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman. In it, Cruise plays Charlie Babbitt who discovers he has a brother, Ray, with autism.
Charlie finds it hard to bond with his brother at first, the complexities of savant syndrome at times causing Ray to exhibit unexpected and disruptive behaviour. But, combined with autism, Ray is able to rapidly process numbers and equations.
One of the best scenes takes place at Las Vegas’ Ceasar’s Palace casino when Charlie, in need of money, uses Ray’s capacity to count cards to win money playing blackjack. As this live casino guide highlights, blackjack is all about having a hand value that is closer to 21 than the dealer’s. The brothers don’t cheat but their method gives the player the advantage over the house. It’s therefore frowned upon by casinos. In the film the brothers are asked to leave but only after triumphantly winning the $86,000 Charlie needed. Rain Man would win four Oscars including Best Picture.
Elsewhere, critics are almost unanimous in agreeing Magnolia features Cruise’s most dynamic and memorable performance. The film, which features an assortment of characters dealing with various personal traumas across a single day in the San Fernando Valley, won rave reviews. A lot of them singled out Cruise for special praise. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the role.
Sadly, it could be a while until the Top Gun star appears in another drama film. After Mission: Impossible there are rumours he’s going to be the first civilian to do a spacewalk in a proposed new sci-fi movie with his Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman. There’s no denying these movies are great entertainment but there are plenty of Cruise fans wanting to see him find a balance between the big, ballsy action heroes and the quieter, more contemplative and vulnerable characters he also excels in.
