Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, but how do his films rank from worst to best">Brad Pitt. A notable exception to this new way of life in Hollywood is Tom Cruise.
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV is an undisputed megastar. Over the course of close to 40 years, the actor has strengthened his status not only as one of the most famous men on the planet but as an enduring commercial and critical force, the likes of which Hollywood doesn't produce anymore. He got his start in bit parts and ensemble pieces but was quickly launched into the upper echelons of fame with a string of major hits that garnered him awards recognition and record-breaking box office power. Throughout the 1990s, he was utterly untouchable, an actor whose name could guarantee big profits and the avid attention of audiences around the world. Even as he established himself as a growing blockbuster force, he still picked up no fewer than three Oscar nominations. All that and he was one half of a tabloid-friendly power couple thanks to his marriage to Nicole Kidman.
By the mid-2000s, Cruise’s reputation had taken a beating. He became more publicly vocal about his dedication to the deeply controversial Church of Scientology, he lambasted psychiatry and actress Brooke Shields for using anti-depressants in interviews, and his awkward public displays of affection with new wife Katie Holmes provided the media with much fodder for mockery. Suddenly, Cruise was seen as weird, an off-kilter celebrity out-of-touch with the masses, and he became more well-known for jumping on Oprah’s couch than his movie roles. While Cruise will never regain the gleaming reputation he had in his prime, he has become more accepted by audiences as he leans further into his on-screen persona as a near-invincible force. While he’s notably stepped away from those prestige roles that made him a critics’ favorite, his focus on higher-than-high-concept action titles wherein he performs his own stunts have kept him in the public eye and won over a new legion of fans. At the age of 58, Cruise has remodeled himself into the era’s most daring action star. Here's every Tom Cruise movie, ranked.
42. The Mummy
The The Mummy. The film tried to blend pulpy action-horror with the now-familiar Tom Cruise model of dramatic stunts and lots of running. The end result was an utterly baffling film that would have been unintentionally hilarious if it weren’t so bloated and boring. The dreary gray color palette combined with derivative plotting and an exhausting attempt to establish a multi-movie franchise that nobody cared about is a ridiculously expensive folly that nobody seemed to think was a good idea. Cruise is also bad as the bland leading man and the film breaks into pieces when it tries to bend to suit his persona. The Mummy had no business being a Tom Cruise movie in more ways than one, and it sank Universal’s expanded universe dreams.
41. Lions for Lambs
Long before anyone ever saw 2007's Lions for Lambs, the movie was decreed an Oscar winner in the making. How could it not be when it starred Cruise alongside Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, the latter of whom also sat in the director's chair? It seemed like an important movie, a stirring political drama about the futility of America's ongoing war in the Middle East. Instead, audiences got an overly-talky civics class that said a lot but nothing of substance. Built more like a play than a movie, Lions for Lambs features a handful of people having long and evidently rehearsed conversations that wouldn't feel out of place on Meet the Press. It’s one thing to preach to the choir but it’s another thing to do it so ineptly. Lions for Lambs ends up feeling like a parody of bad Oscar bait.
40. Endless Love
Cruise made his feature debut in a small role in 1981’s Endless Love, a romantic drama directed by the legendary Franco Zeffirelli that's now become something of a pop-culture punching bag thanks to its tawdry plot and cheesy theme song sung by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie. The movie infamously botches the Scott Spencer novel it's adapted from, turning the book's story of bleak obsession into a trite teen romance that paints stalking as an act of ion. The only saving grace of the movie is James Spader bringing all his '80s sleazy charm to a pointless ing role. Even Cruise completionists would be excused for skipping this one.
39. Losin’ It
Before he made his iconic sex comedy, Risky Business, Cruise starred in the far less acclaimed Losin' It, wherein he played a 1950s teenager who goes on a road trip to Tijuana with his friends to lose their virginity. While it is fascinating to see Cruise alongside a young Shelley Long and Jackie Earle Haley, Losin’ It does nothing that a hundred other ‘80s sex comedies didn’t do better.
38. Far and Away
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were sorely miscast as poor Irish immigrants who move to America to seek their fortune and end up participating in the Cherokee Strip Land Run of 1893. While Far and Away is certainly handsomely shot and director Ron Howard is aiming hard for old-school melodrama akin to 1940s John Ford movies, it's all too simplistically drawn and lacking in depth to truly work. It doesn't help that both Cruise and Kidman are saddled with some of the worst Irish accents committed to celluloid. Cruise would prove himself in far better roles as an actor but it's tough to escape how he simply looks too clean-cut and heroic for a role like this.
37. Cocktail
1988's Cocktail is the pre-requisite Bad Tom Cruise Movie. Lambasted upon release but still a huge commercial success, the movie saw Cruise shaking up a lot of unappetizing-looking cocktails while romancing Elizabeth Shue. It may be the most '80s movie ever made and it has its bad-movie charms, but those contemporary critics weren't lying about its overall emptiness. The original screenplay reportedly changed drastically when Cruise came onboard, changing from a bleak drama about the cult of celebrity into the very thing it was deriding. It's a shame because Cruise was clearly capable of pulling off the story's original intentions.
36. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
Cruise was always a strange choice to play Jack Reacher, Lee Child’s popular literary hero. In the novels, Reacher, a former military officer turned vigilante drifter, is described as being 6 foot 5 inches tall, possessing hands the size of dinner plates, and a face that looks like a "condom crammed with walnuts." Still, Cruise's first outing as the character did well enough to warrant a sequel but Never Go Back is so painfully one-note and such a step down from its predecessor that it's no wonder the burgeoning franchise came to a halt. For a movie with a reported budget of $96 million, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back looks oddly cheap, like a bargain bin thriller you'd find in a video rental store in 1997.
35. Taps
Only the second movie on Cruise's filmography, Taps follows a group of military school students who take over the building to save it from closure. It's easy to see how this concept could have been twisted into an Animal House-style comedy but Taps takes itself far too seriously and spends a lot of time talking about honor and what it means to be a hero, none of which ends up being very effective. There's some novelty in seeing Cruise essentially play the Kevin Bacon character in Animal House if he had access to hard ammo, but this one is an easy skip for Cruise fans.
34. Legend
A year before he became an action megastar with Top Gun, Cruise starred in Legend, Ridley Scott's attempt to do for cinematic fantasy what Blade Runner did for science-fiction. While the movie has its cult fanbase and can be legitimately lauded for its visuals, the paper-thin story and bland lead characters leave the final product to be far less as a whole than the sum of its parts. This is Cruise at his whiniest, not yet the charismatic figure he would evolve into over the coming years, and he doesn't have the charm or commitment yet required to make an ittedly tough character feel alive. He's blasted off the screen by the magnetism of Tim Curry as the devil.
33. All the Right Moves
Another early title in his filmography, Cruise got solid but unspectacular reviews for his performance as a high school football player trying to earn his way to a scholarship so he can escape his economically deprived small hometown and the dead-end jobs of his father and brother. Richard Corliss of Time (via Metacritic) described the film as trying "to prove itself the Flashdance of football." It's a surprisingly perfect description of what is ultimately a cliché-addled pseudo-inspirational drama that continues to be a dime a dozen in Hollywood.
