The Best and Worst of Tom Cruise

Film Starring Tom Cruise That I've Seen:
The Outsiders
Top Gun
Mission: Impossible
Jerry Maguire
Minority Report
War of the Worlds
Mission: Impossible III
Tropic Thunder
Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol
Jack Reacher
Oblivion
Edge of Tomorrow

Best Performance: Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Cruise has been an action hero at least a dozen times in his career, but Edge of Tomorrow was the first time he put a really unique spin on it. Cruise plays William Cage, a cowardly military PR guy who is forced by his bosses to go on the frontlines and fight in the ongoing battle between humans and Mimics, an alien-like creature. Cage is woefully unprepared for the job, but on his first day of battle he kills a Mimic and gets covered in its blood before he dies. Mimic blood has the special ability for its host to live through the same loop of time over and over again and eventually through extensive training from another solider (Emily Blunt) who went through the same experience, Cage finally becomes an asset for the military in their fight against the Mimics. Cruise's performance shows a level of humility and humor that he's never shown in his previous roles without giving up the immense charm that's made him one of the most bankable action stars in movie history.

Worst Performance: Top Gun (1986)
This choice couldn't have been any easier. Everything about Top Gun perfectly embodies the cheesiness of the '80s and Cruise takes his role in this absolutely absurd film way too seriously. 

Best Film: Tropic Thunder (2008) 
Satire is one of my favorite film subgenres and Tropic Thunder is one of the genre's recent standouts. Writer/director/star Ben Stiller lampoons both how self-important and self-involved actors are and classic war films like Apocalypse Now and Platoon damn near perfectly. The razor-sharp script from Stiller, Etan Cohen and fellow actor Justin Theroux is brought to life by an outstanding ensemble cast that includes standout work from Brandon T. Jackson, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr.- who earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance as Kirk Lazarus, an Australian actor who gets a "pigment alteration" surgery to play a black solider in the film-within-a-film. Stiller is an incredibly talented filmmaker and I hope the long-awaited Zoolander 2 will only further strengthen his impressive directorial track record.  

Worst Film: Jack Reacher (2012) 
Jack Reacher is one of the rare movies (for a mainstream, non Oscar-bait film at least) where I can not grasp how it received so much overwhelming praise. The acting is generally terribly despite the presence of talented actors like Cruise, Robert Duvall and Rosamund Pike, the film has an insane amount of unintentionally hilarious scenes and dialogue and most importantly, the film's action scenes just aren't that exhilarating. Aside from Mad Max: Fury Road, I don't think there's been a more overrated action film released this decade than Jack Reacher.

Thank you for reading this week's installment of "The Best and Worst of". Next week I'll take a look at the best and worst work of "Dark Places" star Charlize Theron.