Tom Cruise’s career expands for more than four decades, during which he worked with incredible directors (Spielberg, Kubrick, Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, to name a few), before becoming a crazy stuntman, who also can start a film. He’s been a pilot, a barman, a killer, a spy, a billiards master, and has saved humanity from aliens, just to name a few of his most famous roles. Here are his best movies according to Rotten Tomatoes.
10 Collateral - 86%
Michael Mann’s Collateral is a double-hander between Cruise as Vincent the killer, and Jamie Foxx as Max the cab driver. This cat-and-mouse story is all about these two characters and how good both are at their jobs. As always, Cruise took his job seriously and even went undercover as a USP courier to learn how to blend in. Mann’s film might be the last time the actor played a bad guy, making us wish for more instances when Cruise takes more chances as the role showed a different side of his acting.
9 The Color of Money - 88%
Cruise, Newman, and Scorsese; that’s The Color of Money's secret formula. The film might be a sequel to Newman’s The Hustler, but you can see both actors and the director having a great time with it. Cruise plays Vincent with as much panache as possible, contrasting with Newman’s more discreet attitude about playing pool. Newman won an Academy Award for his performance in this movie, and Cruise spent time with two of the greatest ever, while also learning how to play pool.
8 Rain Man - 89%
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Rain Man is the story of two brothers on a road trip together. Although the showiest part is Dustin Hoffman as autistic brother Raymond (for which Hoffman won an Academy Award for Best Actor), the movie wouldn’t work without Cruise’s Charlie. His character is not great for much of the film, but bit by bit, scene by scene, he starts to understand his older brother, and in the end, you believe he’ll come back to see him soon.
It might’ve been one of the first films to use a character on the spectrum as one of the leads, while giving the road trip between brothers as much respect and love as it deserves. It’s easy to say that they don’t do movies like this anymore, but… yeah, they don’t do movies like this anymore.
7 Minority Report - 90%
Minority Report had both Cruise and Steven Spielberg at the top of their powers, in a unique story about predicting crimes before they happened. Based on a Philip K. Dick short story, the film had many philosophical ideas, while also showing a future that's not far away from ours (advertisement spam when you enter a store because they know you through your retina isn’t that far away).
The story has many twists and turns to reveal what really happened, and Cruise stars in another action role, while also having something else to play as his character has tragically lost a son and has never forgiven himself. The performances of Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton, and Max von Sydow are also great.
6 Edge of Tomorrow - 91%
Although it was adapted from a Japanese manga, "What if we did Groundhog Day, but fighting aliens" could’ve been the pitch for Edge of Tomorrow. The film stars Cruise as a cowardly marketing executive in the fight against the aliens. After getting mixed with a strange alien substance and dying, his character keeps repeating the same day; D-Day against the aliens, over and over again.
The mix of action, humor, and desperation is what makes this movie a unique one, as we follow how the character starts as an incompetent fighter and, with the help of Rita (Emily Blunt), he becomes a killing machine and the last hope for humanity. The movie was so much fun, that fans keep asking for a sequel.
5 Risky Business - 92%
Risky Business made Tom Cruise a star. He was still very young, and playing the charismatic Joel made him into an A-lister, and he has been one since. The story of a kid that transforms his home into a brothel when his parents aren’t home, and falls in love with a woman with a bad reputation would never get made today, but it was the perfect opportunity to show Cruise's charm and angst in a film that gets more and more thrilling as it goes along.
About the movie, Cruise told Vanity Fair: “The dance [in his underwear] in Risky Business. I remember Paul Brickman called me after he’d seen the rushes and was just over the moon. He was laughing hysterically when we were doing it. He called me and just said, “This is going to be a great scene.”
4 Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol - 93%
Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol should’ve been Cruise's last film as Ethan Hunt, as they already had Jeremy Renner’s Brandt ready to take the mantle. But the actor had so much fun doing it, even if he got hurt doing some stunts, that the change of guard never happened. The actor's stunt at the top of the tallest building in the world is still the most memorable, but other unique moments come to mind in the film. From the funny prison extraction that starts the movie, to the fight at the Dubai hotel, and Brandt’s reluctance to jump into a fan and trust Benji’s magnets.
3 Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation - 94%
Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation is the first time we meet Ilsa Faust (a magnetic Rebecca Ferguson), an important character from there on out in the franchise. It’s also the movie where the stunts started getting crazier and crazier for Cruise, as he starts the film in a plane (holding with his bare hands from the outside). This movie was the first Mission: Impossible directed by Christopher McQuarrie (the "Cruise whisperer", as they’ve done many projects together). The picture had so many unique action scenes and fun, adrenaline-fueled moments, that it made sense for McQuarrie to be the first to repeat as a director for the franchise. McQuarrie is also in the process of directing both parts of Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning.
2 Top Gun: Maverick - 96%
Top Gun: Maverick is the return of Maverick (Cruise) to the Top Gun school to teach a new class of pilots in what might be the most dangerous mission ever. Cruise is great in the film and should’ve gotten an Oscar nomination for his performance, as he's all charisma. He also shows some regret about what happened in the first film with Goose, wants to be a father figure to Rooster (Miles Teller), and has the best romantic chemistry of his career with Penny (Jennifer Connelly). The movie became such a box office success that it’s Tom Cruise highest grossing film ever, and with his career, that’s saying something.
1 Mission: Impossible - Fallout - 97%
Mission: Impossible - Fallout has some of the best stunts in the franchise (at least until the next one). Ethan Hunt (Cruise) battles his biggest adversary yet, Walker/John Lark (Henry Cavill) and the apostles, in the film that had everything; skydiving, bathroom brawls, helicopter driving, Paris persecutions, and so much Cruise running (he even broke his ankle in one jump after a long-running sequence). For all those things, this film directed by Christopher McQuarrie is the best of all the Mission: Impossible films (even better than the Brian De Palma-directed one), as it delivers action scenes never seen before, a pretty good villain, some banter with Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Ving Rhames), and even the return of his ex-wife, Julia (Michelle Monaghan).
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