10 best Tom Cruise movies, ranked

WithTom Cruise , nothing ever really terminate . May 23 marks the release of his late Mission : out of the question adventure , and while it ’s subtitledThe Final Reckoning , Cruise and his veritable director Christopher McQuarrie have confirmed there are more films to come .

Through persistency , inscription , and endangerment to animation and limb , the 62 - year - old Cruise has built a live on career as a leading man that seems never to go down . Here are his ten best films , featuring performance both solidly in and out of his comforter zona .

10.Top Gun: Maverick(2022)

Like most of Cruise ’s filmography , Top Gun : Maverick , the long - delayed sequel to the abysmal ‘ fourscore schlock - festTop Gun , is more than the sum of its share . Its maneuvering of a sixty - twelvemonth - old Cruise from flight of steps instructor back into the cockpit is grind , its determination to actively avoid the identity of a country against which Cruise goes on a bombing outpouring is cowardly ( it ’s clearly Russia ) , and Cruise ’s love scenes with Jennifer Connelly are borderline featherbrained .

However , Maverickis an old - fashioned Hollywood adrenaline rush , chock - full of vintage Cruise stunt work , and the aerial photography looks spectacular .

9.Edge of Tomorrow(2014)

Cruise ’s third and good collaborationism with writer Christopher McQuarrie , Edge of Tomorrow , adapts a bonkers Japanese novel that is essentially a cross betweenGroundhog DayandIndependence Day .

sail is Major William Cage ( a perfect Tom Cruise character name ) , enlisted in a warfare against an incursive alien species call the Mimics . foresighted story short , Cage gets trapped in a clip grummet on the day of his death at the Mimics ’ hands that allows him to learn their strategies . Emily Blunt delivers a higher-ranking action performance as his honey sake and fellow - in - weapon system .

8.Rain Man(1988)

Cruise made his name as the everyman ballast for performance by more externally dynamic character actors ( Jack Nicholson inA Few Good Men , Tim Curry inLegend ) . The prototypical example isRain Man , the only Tom Cruise movie so far to win the Oscar for Best Picture .

Here , Cruise is the frustrated steward of his alienated brother , Raymond ( Dustin Hoffman ) , an autistic savant . The motion picture has its weaknesses , but Cruise hits all of his meter aptly , and his exasperation with Raymond ’s eccentricities is a perfectly tuned demonstration of interview surrogacy .

7.Jerry Maguire(1996)

Cruise ’s nose for afootball moviethat would wind up being unendingly repeatable has put him in any number of iconic scenes over the age , and Cameron Crowe ’s book forJerry Maguirehas a panoply of them . ( Cruise alone has both “ aid me avail you ” and “ You complete me , ” Renee Zellweger get “ You had me at hello , ” and Cuba Gooding Jr. have the unbeatable “ Show me the money . ” )

The movie is the ultimate example of Cruise ’s trademark astray - grinning mania thanks to Cruise ’s nominal Jerry , a athletics federal agent stretching himself to his limit as he struggle to do the unprofitable work of stand for his customer ethically ( unthinkable ! ) .

6.Tropic Thunder(2008)

Cruise is , along with Tom Hanks , the defining cinematic leading man of the preceding forty eld , but a trivial of him can often go a long way . No surprisal that some of his most surreptitiously memorable performances have been supporting role , including in Ben Stiller ’s gonzo Hollywood satireTropic Thunder .

Cruise plays Les Grossman , a studio executive transparently establish onHarvey Weinstein , who is called on to negotiate when the star of a Vietnam War film he ’s producing is kidnapped by a drug cartel . Cruise splendidly move over Stiller two weather for have the office : “ I need to have juicy work force , and I ’m gon na dance . ” Mission carry out .

5.Collateral(2004)

Michael Mann ’s activity thriller star Cruisein a rarefied villain role as Vincent , a hitman who hijack the taxicab of Los Angeles cabbie Max Durocher ( Jamie Foxx ) . It ’s a outstanding , clean setup , with a finely structured starting time that give Max ’s aid to detail and pride in his craft — Max is a man who has control of his railroad car and whose car is his command .

Then , when Cruise explodes in the frame with a grey-haired shock wigging that expect so wrong on him , Mann drives home the point in time that Vincent is from another existence . Collateralis electric moving picture - qualification , lean and pixilated most of the way through .

4.Minority Report(2002)

The saucy film Steven Spielberg directed in the first tenner of the twenty - first century was the Philip K. Dick adaptation ofMinority Report . Cruise plays a police chief utilizing psychics to turn back criminals before they commit their intended crimes .

Scott Frank ’s ( The Queen ’s Gambit ) handwriting elevate moral conundrums years onwards of its meter , and Cruise quite effectively applies his even action - celluloid persona to its worthy explorations .

3.Magnolia(1999)

Cruise ’s third Oscar nominating speech number for his outrageous carrying into action as misogynistic motivational speaker Frank T.J. Mackey inMagnolia . In a role that antedate widespread public knowledge of the icky “ pickup creative person ” drift of conquest , Cruise deconstructs the bravura front that had not yet come to be known as toxic maleness .

“ Women are sheep , ” he enjoin his followers in a riveting soliloquy deliver directly to the camera ; “ they have patterns that must be stopped , interrupted , and resisted . ” But of course , such wall as these are made to fall , and in a late scene at the deathbed of his father ( Jason Robards ) , Cruise potently conveys the hurt , solitariness , and nuisance that have precede Mackey to this decimal point .

2.A Few Good Men(1992)

Aaron Sorkin was a barman at Broadway ’s Palace Theatre when he began writing what would become his 1989 playA Few Good Menon the back of cocktail napkins . The film Sorkin would later accommodate from his Broadway smash-up is among the smartest and most quotable studio apartment film of the 1990s .

Naturally , thecourtroom movieis ultimately stolen by Jack Nicholson , whose role as a Marine colonel implicated in a murder clear him an Oscar nominating speech for Best Supporting Actor . But Cruise , as the Navy lawyer prosecuting the case , is one of the desirable screen better half Nicholson has ever had , with herky - jerky , caffein - inflected energy that steels to foregone conclusion in the courtroom .

1.Eyes Wide Shut(1999)

The other exposure from Cruise ’s streamer year of 1999,Eyes Wide Shut , is a stark storm of world - beating celebrity ( he co - starred with his then - wife Nicole Kidman ) , Hollywood royalty ( it was author - director Stanley Kubrick ’s terminal film ) , and brilliant mise - en - scène .

It was a narration of intimate green-eyed monster decade in the making , and Cruise was the perfect selection for the role of a repressed elite who falls asunder seek to see behind the mantle of a world closed to him . ( Just imagine if Kubrick had made the film in the 1960s and casthis original pick for the lead , Woody Allen ! )

Tom Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick.