5 Times Tom Cruise Surprised the Hell Out of the Haters
While it’s probably universally accepted that Tom Cruise is one of the most enduring and bankable movie stars still working today, anyone who’s followed him throughout his career (as I have) also knows that he is not infallible in his film choices. With the impending release of his American Made, that fact may be reinforced after a pretty uneven several years in terms of the films he’s stamped his name on (especially with stiff competition from a certain Amazonian demigoddess still invading multiplexes). But instead of looming on the negative – on the fact that this could be another Jack Reacher as opposed to another Mission: Impossible – I’m going to instead focus on five distinct times Tom Cruise has proved all the haters wrong, and reinforced his position in Hollywood as one of the most reliable and interesting stars working today.
Now, before I dig into the five times Tom Cruise has bucked our expectations with stellar and surprising work, I have a confession… I’m a MASSIVE Tom Cruise fan. I am a bonafide, card-carrying, full-throated advocate of the His Cruisiness, and I’m not ashamed to say it, as you’ll soon see. Everything from the smile, the running, the hanging from buildings, the fly-by’s, the motocycle riding, the crying, the extended holding of breath, the hanging onto the outside of planes in flight, and his general unbridled energy and commitment to even his BAD films, makes me an unflinching Tom Cruise groupie. Sure, I’m willing to admit that the couch jumping on Oprah was a bit much, and that the Church of Scientology seems more like an organized crime syndicate than a church. Hey, nobody’s perfect. But if you take his work on its own and the fact that he gives 100% into all his roles, and that he’s taken some well-strategized risks in the process, you’ll see that he is worthy of a chance to prove everyone wrong.
(Note: the following isn’t supposed to be a list of what I think the best Tom Cruise films are. It is a list of the times where he surprised us)
And with that, here is my list of the 5 Times Tom Cruise Surprised the Hell Out of the Haters (in ascending chronological order):
