This mission, if you accept it, will consist of classifying the 42 films made by Tom Cruise, who will be 60 years old on July 3.
By forgetting his voiceover in a documentary and his appearance in an “Austin Powers”.
This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
Let's go.
1. “Collateral” (2004)
It takes two or three very big films in a career, and tour de force, the hero here is a bastard.
Not in the habits of Tom Cruise - although - who always runs just as straight, but to do evil, more and more absolute, as a hitman in charge of several contracts in a single night, aboard a taxi which he has kidnapped the driver played by Jamie Foxx.
Brilliant screenplay, dizzying staging by Michael Mann which lends its letters of nobility to the saturated colors of digital technology.
A gray-haired businessman look for Tom Cruise, a clean assassin.
Shocked when the blood ends up smearing his briefcase.
2. “Eyes Wide Shut” (1999)
Everything there is mythical.
The anthology scenes with Nicole Kidman - they then formed the most glamorous couple in Hollywood - of an intimacy that he would never allow himself again.
The last film by Stanley Kubrick, who died at the end of editing and before the release.
A trip to the end of the night, of desire, of danger, of the couple, of life and death through New York.
The day of Christmas.
Tom Cruise plays in almost every shot for 2h39 and embodies with incredible phlegm a doctor subjected to a series of experiences and ordeals like the sequences of a dream.
A psychoanalytic thriller.
An island of temptations.
That year, the Best Actor Oscar went to Kevin Spacey.
Tom Cruise was only nominated, and as a supporting role, for another film, "Magnolia", without winning anything.
Is this world serious?
3. “Rain Man” (1988)
Tom Cruise, here alongside Dustin Hoffman, changed dimension thanks to his performance in “Rain Man”.
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The star is the other, Dustin Hoffman.
His brushing is very dated to the 1980s. Apart from these details, Tom Cruise becomes a very great actor in "Rain Man", precisely because he knows how to fade, arise, play in pairs, and go from annoyed stupefaction to tenderness in the face of this autistic brother of whose existence he was unaware.
He steals from him the inheritance that this small car salesman was watching when his father died.
The timeless direction of Barry Levinson, a formidable storyteller, has never gone out of style.
Prepare your tissues.
4. “Minority Report” (2002)
The starting point, grandiose, comes from the news of the great writer of SF Philip K. Dick: in 2054, it will be possible to foresee the murders and John Anderton leads a squad which allows him to intervene a few seconds before a crime.
Until the system designates him as a potential assassin and he flees to understand... A great Spielberg, who offers Tom Cruise everything he knows how to do - a record of stunts, special effects and chained sprints - with in addition one of the best scenarios of his filmography.
5. “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” (2011)
What could be better than watching Tom Cruise run as Ethan Hunt?
We could dissect his gestures like those of an Olympic sprinter.
This "Mission Impossible 4" saved the franchise, after a breathless 2 and 3.
Since then, it's James Bond who passes for Canada Dry in comparison.
The scene of the attack in the Kremlin and its enormous explosion fascinate in this spring of 2022. Since then, the saga has not made any mistakes.
And installed Tom Cruise as the best action movie actor.
Unlike 007, no need to find a successor.
Forever Young.
A mission that will still end up becoming… impossible.
6. “Knight & Day” (2010)
Don't ask us what the "Knight" in this nifty title means, you'll find out in the final few minutes.
As if Tom Cruise hadn't filmed enough “Mission Impossible”, he also made this one, a kind of parody, signed by James Mangold, a master of Hollywood.
The romantic comedy couple that the actor with the eccentric stunts forms with Cameron Diaz earns him a very high place in the rankings.
Because you want your life to be like this (open your arms wide, like them), or like this (little arm, little player)?
Smiling throughout a film is never stupid.
7. “Cocktail” (1988)
The choice of the heart.
It's the Tom Cruise we love.
So tender.
Young and innocent.
The kind of movie that feels like a little thing and ends up tearing your eyes out.
It seems light, this story of a bartender with big dreams that never come true, from Manhattan to Jamaica, and it says two or three well-felt things about life: "We overestimate discussions by thinking that it can settle", "A bartender is the aristocrat of the working class".
Killer reggae, 80s nostalgia, the Twin Towers in the foreground.
Julia Roberts has her “Mystic Pizza” (same year, same vibration), Tom Cruise has her “Cocktail”.
Films without pretension, not without emotion.
8. “Team Spirit” (1983)
The one you see last, never heard of, and saws you.
What a beautiful picture!
Michael Chapman, ephemeral director but cameraman of the "Godfather" and chief operator of "Taxi Driver" or of the clip "Bad" by Michael Jackson, a lighting genius, is the one who knew best how to film Tom Cruise at 20 years old.
A small town in Pennsylvania, its unemployed steelworks, stretching adolescence, the local American football team of which the young actor plays one of the leaders.
He already had everything.
A little treasure to share.
9. “Jerry Maguire” (1996)
When he knows how to surround himself with good directors, like Cameron Crown, the actor excels in intelligent romantic comedy.
Jerry Maguire, agent of sports stars who decides at his own risk to trade his cynicism for ethics - it was visionary - believes he is falling in love with his faithful employee, played by Renée Zellweger, gets lost on the way, before d really access his feelings.
Everything is in this waltz-hesitation.
With a wonderful line: "Jerry, don't tell us our sad stories".
Tom Cruise lands an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
10. “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022)
Tom Cruise looks younger than ever in this second installment of “Top Gun” Scott Garfield
We give up arms.
Farewell to arms.
Tom Cruise is turning 60 and he still has pretty much the same abs.
Always more or less the same teenager, too, on his motorbike in the rising sun.
The film is much better constructed and produced than the first.
More than nostalgia (apart from the heartbreaking appearance of sick Val Kilmer, Iceman so dazzling with insolent youth in 1986), we unreservedly savor this patina on the hero's leather, the winks, this new beginning, and a very good action film by the team of "Mission impossible".
11. “Mission Impossible: Fallout” (2018)
Because Paris is magical.
The arrival in dive and parachute on a glass roof ablaze with colors of the Grand Palais transformed into a dancefloor remains a great moment of cinema, just like the chase on the banks of the Seine.
An extremely elegant film, like Vanessa Kirby, the Margaret of the first two seasons of "The Crown", whose thickness proves once again how much Tom Cruise knows how to surround himself with strong female roles.
12. “Barry Seal” (2017)
Yes, we overrate all his comedies, underestimated, even if they can turn into drama.
A kind of crazy and funny “Top Gun”.
A crazy, cool and destructive Maverick.
Barry Seal, inspired by a real character, brilliant airline pilot, is recruited by the CIA to disrupt the nascent communism in Central America by delivering drugs, weapons, like geopolitics of nickel-plated feet, under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan.
Tom Cruise makes us melt with his magic of a smile released like an ippon in the worst circumstances.
A nostalgia for happiness constantly surfaces in this deceptively light and truly tragic film.
Blasting with the smile of the Reagan years.
13. “Jack Reacher” (2012)
There is Hitchcock, Michael Mann, and perhaps Chuck Norris in this excellent thriller where the star's ability to renew himself in an exactly identical genre impresses.
The stunts are his alexandrines, he masters the rhythm to perfection.
In a beautiful staging by Christopher McQuarrie, the gray matter of the "Mission Impossible" productions, he forms with Rosamund Pike one of those couples of which he has the secret.
No need for anything to happen between them.
Tom Cruise swims further into childhood than adulthood.
This action movie Peter Pan embodies a former soldier in Iraq who will "play" and thwart a mad plot.
14. “Mission: Impossible 5: Rogue Nation” (2015)
This may be where "Mission Impossible" really outshines 007, by a shoulder, but for good.
Dryer, more direct, more balanced in his relationship to women.
Tom Cruise has never looked so much like Bruce Lee in his gestures and his abs, and in his fifties, that's enough to win the admiration of boomers forever.
If death can wait for Bond, growing old can wait for Hunt.
The franchise's best opening scene with its Carl Lewis-esque sprint to rush into a plane taking off.
Torrents of waterfalls.
15. “Mission Impossible” (1996)
The mythical scene of entering CIA headquarters contributed to the legend of the “Mission Impossible” saga.
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Some say it is old fashioned.
He is precisely the missing link with the TV series, and for this reason the first "Mission Impossible" is priceless.
At the time, it was slower, but Brian de Palma films like Hitchcock in “The Death by the Kits”.
Classic, in the good sense of the term.
With French in the team, Emmanuelle Béart and Jean Reno.
A long anthology scene to enter the CIA headquarters.
Those who saw it in 1996, when the multi-rerun series had intensified their childhood Saturdays twenty or thirty years earlier, will never forget Tom Cruise's entry into the role of his life.
16. “Magnolia” (1999)
He breaks his image as a completely crazy coach, alpha male and very beta, ultra-macho and sexist, author of the book "Seduce and destroy", which electrifies male rooms by shouting "Respect the dick", "We must lead the war of the tuft”.
Tom Cruise got his last Oscar nomination for this role where his gaze reveals a truly disturbing aggressiveness behind his carnivorous smile.
A great performance but a small place in this three-hour choral film, not necessarily the best of Paul Thomas Anderson, a great and unequal filmmaker.
17. "Men of Honour" (1992)
For the duel with Jack Nicholson, of course, as an arrogant old officer whom the young lawyer lieutenant, daddy's son will bring down by killing the symbolic father.
But also the one with Demi Moore, a catchy lawyer who refuses to be left on the edge.
It is bizarre today to see the scenes taking place at Guantanamo, the US military base in Cuba that would become infamous in the 2000s for the torture inflicted on Daesh prisoners.
A gripping military thriller about behind-the-scenes 'punishments' gone wrong between GIs.
18. "The Color of Money" (1987)
On JT de la Deux, William Leymergie pronounces “Tom Cruiz”, his journalist too.
Not yet entered our heads.
Even if "Top Gun" made him a star six months before.
It is in front of Martin Scorsese's camera that Tom Cruise breaks his cocoon and stands up to Paul Newman in this story of billiard champions and cheaters, a remake or rather sequel to "The Con man".
Cruise takes over the role held in 1961 by Newman, who here becomes his old mentor in dirty tricks.
The very young actor shows a zest of self-mockery: "We say too handsome, too stupid", throws his girlfriend, a nod to his debut as a handsome kid.
Paul Newman wins the Best Actor Oscar.
Cruise isn't even nominated for the supporting role.
The beginning of a great misunderstanding with the institution.
19. “Valkyrie” (2008)
A film to reevaluate, especially in 2022. Replace Hitler with Putin and this desperate plot by high-ranking German army officers, inspired by a true story, to overthrow the Führer in 1944 resonates strongly.
The actor plays with remarkable sobriety - his signature - a colonel revolted by Hitler's drift.
Bryan Singer - "Usual Suspect", the "X Men" series - perfectly masters the portrait of these worried, determined men, dedicated to saving the crumbs of their dignity or perishing.
This thriller grips you to the end when you know the end from the start.
20. "The Firm" (1993)
Beautiful as a jaguar when he runs in a suit, coat and briefcase.
"Running in movies since 1981," the actor writes on his Instagram account as his only biography.
It is always necessary to see a film until the end, especially when it is signed Sydney Pollack.
The great director of the 70s and "Out of Africa" hangs around here, but the finale of this legal thriller about a shady law firm adapted from John Grisham's bestseller strikes like a cloud of lightning.
Because it does not contain outdated special effects, but mental battles, the same as today in finance.
21. "Days of Thunder" (1990)
Less cult than "Top Gun", but more successful, by the same director Tony Scott.
Stock car racing - the Nascar Championship - in Indianapolis replaces fighter jets.
The events are remarkably filmed, with a documentary side, but on the mythological side, the film allowed the meeting on the screen and on the set with Nicole Kidman, then unknown.
She met Tom Cruise on the casting and landed the role of the doctor who treats him after his accident.
Young and carefree.
An unalterable charm.
22. “Top Gun” (1986)
No question of offending the generations of teenagers for whom this film remains a blanket and much more.
It is unclassified, for its impact on awakened hearts and senses.
Even if the film has aged as terribly as Tom Cruise seems terribly young in it.
He is 23 years old and does not do them.
He has not found his voice, nor the modulations of mischief and self-mockery that will come later.
This is the time when the handsome kid put everything on his smile and his seductive look.
To be placed in an evening, the reply that Kelly McGillis throws at him, here in VF: “Handsome guy, in bed, or you will lose me forever”.
23. "War of the Worlds" (2005)
This rank, which may seem severe, is in no way indexed to the quality of this very good science fiction film by Steven Spielberg, adaptation of the classic by HG Wells written in 1898 - which recently gave birth to a series on Canal + - but to the fact that the theme, the special effects, the arrival of extraterrestrials in America largely takes over the actors, however good they may be.
Tom Cruise does the job, but if you're not a fan of the genre, you pass.
24. “Rock Forever” (2012)
Stacee Jaxx, the craziest role of her life with Franck Mackey from “Magnolia”.
We see little of him in this musical on an 80s soundtrack, from Bon Jovi to Scorpions via Guns N'Roses, Foreigner and Def Leppard, but we are not likely to forget him as a tattooed rocker, lost, alcoholic who shouts to the waiter, a monkey, "Hey man, Scotch me", when his bottle is empty, and is obnoxious with a journalist to whom he grants five minutes flat.
Enjoyable.
25. "Born on the 4th of July" (1989)
Tom Cruise's performance in 'Born on the 4th of July' earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
RONALD GRANT/MARY EVANS/SIPA
A great performance - which earned him an Oscar nomination, but still failed - in a bloated film.
Oliver Stone so quickly forgot the conciseness of his beginnings - "Salvador", "Platoon", "Wall Street" - for increasingly long films, too talkative, highlighted with airport Wagner music, with a bombastic message to America.
Yes, this film was necessary on the fate of returned veterans who are amputated or disabled from Vietnam, whom no one wants or can look in the face, like Ron Kovic.
No, he wasn't born to go down in history, sorry.
26. "Outsiders" (1983)
That year, Francis Ford Coppola, director of "The Godfather" and "Apocalypse Now", released two films at the same time, launching a new generation of actors.
“Rusty James”, with Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke and Nicolas Cage, and “Outsiders”, a pitched battle between two rival bands, the “Greasers” proles against the “Socs” bourges.
Tom Cruise, a "Greaser", still has his round kid face ready to explode, with Patrick Swayze, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon who plays in the two films, Rob Lowe, Diane Lane.
All had their heyday, but apart from Nicolas Cage, in this fantastic 83 promo, Tom Cruise made the hole.
27. “Risky Business” (1983)
His first real role.
His first people affair with his partner Rebecca de Mornay.
He is 20 years old, looks 15. And plays a student who falls in love with a call girl and becomes a pimp by accident, atmosphere "Pretty woman" more than "Exclusive investigation".
Already a sex icon with her denim shorts.
He smokes, which he wouldn't do anymore.
And he wouldn't shoot such a scenario again.
We had to start well.
Like his character who will do anything to make money.
On a Tangerine Dream soundtrack.
A curiosity.
28. “Tropical Thunder” (2008)
This delirious parody of the Hollywood shooting of a war film in Asia by and with Ben Stiller cannot appear at the top of the ranking because Tom Cruise only plays a "guest", but fabulous.
Bearded, hairless skull between Denis Podalydès and VGE, barely recognizable, he demonstrates his comic talent as a racist and hysterical producer, capable of destroying his own image with insults, each more beautiful than the other.
In the third degree.
29. “The Edge of Tomorrow” (2014)
It was the heyday of 3D cinema and it did.
On the small screen, things come undone a bit, even if the scenario is out of the ordinary: Tom Cruise as a hidden major, more accustomed to TV sets than to fighting, finds himself bombarded in the front, hazed, killed and even re-killed again .
As in "Un jour sans fin", the officer who has never got his hands dirty and bloody relives the same landing against the extraterrestrials over and over again, and improves with each rebirth to save the world.
The touch Christopher McQuarrie, his favorite screenwriter, and Emily Blunt in a tough role.
With Cruise, women have definitely never played potiches.
30. “The Last Samurai” (2003)
Tom Cruise and his atypical look in "The Last Samurai".
RONALD GRANT/MARY EVANS/SIPA
It's a little "Dances with Wolves" in samurai, but the Kevin Costner look - beard and long hair of a former hero of the Indian wars - does not at all suit Tom Cruise, who is the contemporary actor by Excellency.
We will dare to say that almost all his historical films are errors, even if it means being hara-kiri.
Excellent scenario - the killer of Redskins hired as a mercenary by the Emperor of Japan to put down a revolt of samurai before being turned upside down by the values of the latter - but second error: Tom Cruise, who often chooses his directors well, should not have trusted Edward Zwick, a nag who also botched his second “Jack Reacher”.
31. “Mission Impossible 3” (2006)
The best villain (Philip Seymour Hoffman), but one of the worst films in the franchise.
An inexplicable failure.
Tom Cruise had chosen director JJ Abrams for his series "Alias", so close to the "Mission Impossible" of the 60s, and which "Lost" had made famous.
It was his first film at the cinema.
How can the start be so slow?
Little emotion, alchemy does not take.
The momentum will return with 4, of which Abrams will remain co-producer.
But more behind the camera.
32. “Mission Impossible 2” (2000)
He has his followers.
Not us.
Because it often falls into ridicule.
The trademark of filmmaker John Woo, author of ultra-stylized thrillers with hemoglobin in Hong Kong, which came out of his great American success, "Volte/Face".
A great director, but who overdid it, with tons of spectacularity right up to the big horn in every scene.
Woo, rather crazy, found his master in Tom Cruise who gave him cold sweats by realizing himself, in seven takes, the rock climbing scene on the cliff.
We still remember it twenty years later, it's not nothing.
But the exploit is not everything.
33. “Taps” (1981)
Forever the first.
A supporting role.
Tom Cruise was 18, Sean Penn 20 at the time of filming.
Impossible to guess the future stars.
Kids.
A film before cell phones and social networks, very slow, about fraternity in a military academy threatened with closure.
Following a tragedy, the army cadets, aged 12 to 18, entrench themselves as at Fort Alamo, without a single adult.
Serious, touching, funny at times, disarming (if one can say so) in its exploration of the strange relationship to weapons of Americans.
34. “American Teenagers” (1983)
Film fallen into oblivion, classified “nanar” on certain sites or “932e film on adolescence”, thus rather far from the top… We say to ourselves that it will be stupid so much the play of certain young actors is outraged.
But it's by Curtis Hanson, the director of “LA Confidential”.
And it's taking shape.
In 1965, four high school friends from Los Angeles decide to lose their virginity at all costs (“Losin'it”, the original title, is more inciting) in Tijuana, on the Mexican border.
“No, I'm not a virgin”, repeats the very cute Tom Cruise in his too wise jacket, to the nice prostitute, or “Can we turn off the light first?
".
“Doing” it is mission impossible… We smile, we get attached.
And one of the four friends is played by John Stockwell, future "Cougar" of "Top Gun".
35. "Lions and Lambs" (2007)
Sur l’affiche, c’est parfait. Robert Redford derrière et devant la caméra, Meryl Streep en journaliste chevronnée qui interviewe un député républicain convaincu de pouvoir révolutionner la géopolitique américaine en Afghanistan, incarné par Tom Cruise. Un rôle de costard cravate qui reste assis, préfère discourir que courir, à contre-emploi, qu’il endosse avec sa facilité déconcertante, mais dans un film bavard, ennuyeux et décevant.
36. « Horizons lointains » (1992)
Peut mieux faire. Copie trop plate. Sujet traité avec un manque de profondeur. Tout cinéaste américain rêve de cette grande fresque de l’émigration à la fin du XIXe siècle, de l’Irlande à Boston puis à la Frontière, en passant par la misère des villes. En bateau puis à cheval. Ron Howard est un bon artisan de Hollywood, mais comme cette peinture de la naissance de l’Amérique se révèle académique, empesée. Même le couple Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman manque de naturel. Un comble.
37. « Oblivion » (2013)
Trop de « Copy that », ce « Bien reçu » ânonné par Jack Bauer dans « 24 heures chrono », devenu depuis vingt ans le « Passe-moi le sel » de tout film d’action américain, trop de 2077 ou 2090, trop de combinaisons argentées dignes des Bogdanov dans « Temps X », trop de douches torse nu à la cinquantaine (on sait, Tom, que tu es éternel), trop de drones, trop de post-apocalypse, trop de tablettes numériques, trop vu, trop entendu, trop mangé de ces films comme des glaces un peu lourdes. Une superproduction de Joseph Kosinsky, le réalisateur de « Top Gun : Maverick », qui fait le job, mais pas plus.
38. « Legend » (1985)
C’était un an avant la déflagration « Top Gun » réalisé par son frère Tony. Ridley Scott joue la carte ultra-romantique et les cheveux longs du jeune Tom Cruise dans ce conte de fées qui reste d’une grande beauté visuelle. Mais si vous n’êtes pas fan de l’univers Fantasy, passez votre chemin. C’est notre cas. N’empêche, après « Les Duellistes », « Alien » et « Blade Runner », Ridley Scott, lui aussi à ses débuts, prenait un risque avec ce film sur l’affrontement du Bien et du Mal pour empêcher une princesse de sombrer dans la nuit éternelle et la perversité. Le film a toujours ses fanatiques et on les respecte.
39. « Entretien avec un vampire » (1994)
On sait, ce sera le classement le plus attaqué. Non, ce n’est pas notre Tom Cruise. Même avec Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas et Christian Slater dans la fleur de l’âge, ce film de Neil Jordan salué à sa sortie a bien trop et mal vieilli. Le côté mort-vivant ne lui va pas comme un gant blanc d’un costume qui n’était pas fait pour lui. Jouer un vampire ? Pas besoin : pour rester éternellement jeune, il doit en être un pour de vrai. Le voir croquer dans un rat pour s’en faire un jus de fruit au sang frais, on dit beurk.
40. « Vanilla Sky » (2001)
« C’est un cauchemar », hurle Tom Cruise vers la fin. Oui, surtout pour nous. Ce remake américain du film espagnol « Ouvrez les yeux », qui a propulsé le réalisateur Alejandro Amenabar et Penélope Cruz - qui reprend son rôle de Sofia - à Hollywood est beaucoup trop long, déjà un facteur éliminatoire. Le clin d’œil appuyé à « Jules et Jim » de François Truffaut est déplacé. David, pris entre deux femmes, dont la dingo vaut à Cameron Diaz le meilleur rôle, totalement perchée, devient littéralement fou, mais pas autant que nous. Trop brumeux, voire fumeux.
41. « Jack Reacher : Never Go Back » (2016)
Le premier était top, le second tient du flop. Soldé. Quatre ans après le premier Jack Reacher, le charme est passé. Le mystère dissipé. Après le prototype, le numéro de série, à peine commercialisable avec ses vices de fabrication. Des scènes de combat sorties d’un jeu vidéo. Mise en scène lourdingue, aucun supplément d’âme. Qu’est-il arrivé au loup solitaire de l’armée après ses excellents débuts ? À cause de ce thriller sans style, il n’obtiendra jamais le crédit de Jason Bourne ou Ethan Hunt.
42. « La Momie » (2017)
Badly directed, he throws stares worthy of a bad silent movie and runs on autopilot like a Sunday morning jog.
Tom Cruise as a mummy hunter was set to compete with Marvel and relaunch a Dark Universe monster movie franchise.
Who remembers it?
The feature film flopped, the saga was abandoned, and the actor even won the Razzie Award for "worst actor" of the year.
Showing off your bare torso as a super-muscular athlete at 55 is no longer enough.
Here, he is the mummy.
No, are we not going to end on such a sentence?
One or two real stews in more than forty films, it's a lesson: Tom Cruise deserves to be seen and especially seen again.
The honorary Palme d'Or received in Cannes on May 18 catches up with the Oscar he never got.
Long live France, the cinema and this irresistible almost sexagenarian.
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