TOM CRUISE
CINERAMA
HIGH OCTANE CRUISE BECOMES ACTING LEGEND IN RATHER SHORT ORDER
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
Blockbuster action hero production studios have been dominated by just a chosen few actors. And few of those actors can cross over from blockbuster action hero films to other genres and then go back to blockbusters.
Tom Cruise initially starred in a series of coming of age movies that branded the teenage market with an interest for films that carried his name on the movie marque.
Cruise then found roles in various young charismatic male occupations such as a fighter pilot and race car driver as his audience aged out a bit and began to look forward to interesting careers in young adulthood.
These films often starred a brash young narcissist compelled by American values and the false feeling of invincibility in youth that often made his characters reckless as a result. The screen character would predictably, eventually falter a bit before overcoming the loss except in a little more fragile state than before.
The name on the marque and the fame that came along with starring roles in films was not enough for Cruise as he matured as an actor, and then moved into yet other genres to showcase his acting art and expand his audience base.
The Color of Money (1986), costarring Paul Newman and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, was one of those movie roles that came along once in a while to dramatically shift Cruise’s film career and deepen the depth of his acting art. Cruise would costar with established Hollywood icons, intensify his acting, and then move on to the next film.
Newman was perhaps perfect in the third phase of his film career as an actor portraying street wise characters with life experience. Cruise subtly shifts his narcissist character actor to one more reckless, but also one more vulnerable with a certain naiveté that made him suspectable to manipulation. Vincent learns to look up to Eddie, learns as much about playing pool as he can from his mentor, and then moves on.
Cruise is so charismatic on screen that he has been able to maintain marque status costarring with established Hollywood icons like Newman, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Gene Hackman.
Cruise next flips his movie roles by costarring with Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988). This time the established Hollywood icon plays the vulnerable character with autism while Cruise plays the enabling mentor.
Then, director Oliver Stone casts Cruise in the biopic, Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Stone begins to synthesize his movie art behind the camera, while Cruise fuses the vulnerable screen character he has newly created with the high octane mentor character.
Cruise plays young high school graduate Ron Novic, who says goodbye to his childhood on Prom Night just days before going off to fight in the Vietnam War.
Stone had already screened a stinging indictment of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War with the film, Platoon (1986). The All American filmmaker was able to create a personalized dramatization of the war because he himself was a Vietnam War Veteran.
The director of films about American stories then personalizes the experience a bit further with the first person account of a Vietnam War Veteran coping with the guilt of war and a divided national response to veterans returning home.
Cruise showcases his acting art by portraying the deep, complicated shifting emotional trauma that Novic endured readjusting to his home town after a tour of duty and a battlefield injury that sends him home for a life as a paraplegic.
Cruise must also perform a range of emotions as Stone, the experienced screenwriter and director, takes the audience through an elaborate plot with an ensemble cast. Cruise is able to find his place in front of the camera by playing off several minor supporting actors cast in the script.
This balancing of acting art created for Stone is something Cruise takes with him as he learns to play fair in more mature, more complicated films as his career progresses.
Cruise also method acts for the film, spending weeks in pre-production experiencing how to survive in a wheelchair, and spending time with Novic to understand the torturous road the real life war veteran had taken.
Cruise’s acting becomes more versatile as a result because he is then able to draw from more experiences other than from his own background once the camera begins rolling.
Two more films grounded in reality and produced in quick succession would define Cruise’s career as more serious, longer lasting actor that might be around in movie theatres for quite some time. Cruise seemed determined not to become a passing matinee idol.
In A Few Good Men (1992), Cruise costars with Demi Moore, Kevin Bacon and Jack Nicholson, in a courtroom drama about the prosecution of two marines charged with using excessive military discipline that caused that death of a fellow marine.
Cruise plays off Nicholson with both actors winning accolades for their performances. Cruise’s role is almost self-reflective as his legal associates taunt him to take himself more seriously and become a better lawyer as a result. In the same way, Cruise was transitioning from his high octane on screen performances to a more complicated in depth character that could synthesize multiple emotions within the same script.
In The Firm (1993), Cruise plays a Harvard Law School Graduate that quickly comes down to earth when he discovers that the Memphis law firm he works for keeps their associates under close surveillance for a reason. Cruise’s character goes through a complete reversal from imbuing confidence to taking a frantic manic flight to safety.
Gene Hackman plays the senior lawyer mentoring the new associates.
Cruise finds the true depth of his acting art before diving into the spy film blockbuster franchise, eventually acquiring the franchise and the starring role as team leader, Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible (1996).
Cruise obtains production rights so as to be able to oversee and edit every aspect of making a spy genre film. Cruise’s hero character developed for the franchise role transitions from one emotion to another from scene to scene as his acting must have something to offer the audience each time the fast paced script turns, twists and reverses.
Cruise then shifts material from high octane realism to fantasy, war and science fiction with Vanilla Sky (2001) costarring Penelope Cruz and Cameron Diaz, as well as Kurt Russell and Jason Lee, and Minority Report (2002) costarring Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton and Max von Sydow. These genres better compliment the Mission Impossible film franchise into which Cruise had just invested his entire career.
The film persona begins to experience deeper anguish as a result of his own undoing, but also because of the volatility and the unpredictable immorality of the people around him.
In Vanilla Sky, life comes to an end when his mistress, played by Cameron Diaz, drives the two of them off a bridge. Cruise’s character still has a bit of high octane in him, but the narrative is so fantastical as to allow even the audience to experience some form of existential anguish.
In Minority Report, life goes sideways for Police Chief John Anderton when his only child is abducted at a public swimming pool while under his care. The loss of a child causes his marriage to break down, and life even then gets a tad worse when Cruise’s character becomes hunted by the law enforcement agency he had once led.
Steven Spielberg directs the science fiction crime drama. Cruise by this time has worked for Hollywood’s brightest directors, including Franco Zeffirelli, Francis Ford Coppola, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Ron Howard, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Brian de Palma and Stanley Kubrick.
Five more Mission Impossible films and two more biopics, as well as the Jack Reacher franchise later, and Cruise, if he was not before, is a well respected filmmaker in front of and behind the camera.
The Mission Impossible films keep pace with advancing CGI technology allowing several scenes to be made as artful masterpieces combining movie aesthetics with adrenaline charging action that suspends disbelief through elaborate plots that have more than one reversal.
Without a doubt, a Cruise film is a Cruise film, but after learning from experienced actors in previous films, he takes an ensemble cast along the narrative with him. The Hollywood icon is still center stage though, playing off supporting actors, but not quite as overwhelmingly the only star on the sound stage as in his early films.
Cruise will occasionally use sardonic humor as opposed to a sex scene or gratuitous violence as the plot reversal. In Jack Reacher (2012) Cruise plays an ex-military officer gone off the grid.
The plot involves Reacher resurfaces to help an FBI agent solve a mass shooting.
Reacher is just about half way through the plot when two goons hired to kill him have an Abbot and Costello pantomime in the bathroom.
In Color of Money, all the pool hall rehearsals in the world could not have prepared Vincent for going on the road with Eddie and Carmen when they find a legendary pool hall abandoned and used instead for storing furniture. Cruise’s character flips out, ripping the railing off the wall and almost falling down the staircase.
In Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol (2011) Hunt must climb the outside of a glass skyscraper in Dubai to get to the building’s computer server. The gloves designed to stick to the outer glass walls begin to faulter, forcing Cruise to slingshot back down into the IMF office suite.
Other films, such as War of the Worlds (2005) have no humor. Instead, the narrative simply gets worse and worse until Cruise’s character goes through a sudden and dramatic reversal. Spielberg again casts Cruise in the leading role, and there is again no room for humor in this apocalyptic film devoid of hope.
Spielberg combines realism with science fiction and turns Cruise into a divorced father of two children fighting monsters from another world. The director’s world has no hope until finally the war stops and people must begin to put their lives back together just before the camera stops rolling. Spielberg uses the same formula to create suspense in other films.
Cruise does not hurry into filmmaking, being seemingly content with making 44 good to excellent films in forty years, as opposed to making two films a year but ending up with less than 44 good films and a bit more than 44 not so good films.
The Mission Impossible franchise films have become sophisticated productions requiring several months of pre and post production work.
In between franchise films, Cruise does two more biopics.
In Valkyrie (2008), Cruise plays biopic Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, one of the leaders behind a scheme to assassinate Adolf Hitler during World War II. Cruise discards his usual physical acting for the disabled body of an amputee looking for his mark in front of the camera with one glass eye after his character was injured by an Allied aerial raid in the opening scenes. The script provides opportunities for another ensemble cast for Cruise to play with, this time including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Thomas Kretschmann.
In American Made (2017) Cruise plays a biopic pilot recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency to fly cocaine from South America.
For the most part, Cruise is a character actor in leading film roles with the genre wrapped around his acting in such a way as to make each new film unique and worth watching.
The action hero film can be so compelling as to push the audience to overlook a lot of the film art. But if the audience eye is slowed down a bit, Cruise can be seen working through a different emotion in almost every new sequence of scenes, and quite often, he even takes on a different state of being from film to film, as evidence of just how good his film art has become.
