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MINDS FAR MORE powerful than yours and ours have tried to figure out what drives Tom Cruise. For four decades, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has been in the big leagues of Hollywood stars, a bankable vessel of A-list charm and heroism who maintains a tight grasp on his celebrity image and whose work splits the difference between relentlessly pushing himself and classic audience satisfaction. Back when the ’80s became the ’90s, he graduated from the cocksure hits of Risky Business and Top Gun to the acclaimed schmaltzy dramas Rain Man and Jerry Maguire. Flash forward to today, and he’s made it a point to leave the Scientology bad press and memes behind him, instead homing in on and assuming the crown of “Mr. Movies.” He’s the key authorial voice on all his projects, he’s amassed 30 years of white-knuckle, keenly supervised action movies, and thanks to the dynamite success of Top Gun: Maverick in a poor pandemic box office, he’s been dubbed by many as “the last movie star.”
But that’s not the Tom Cruise we see in Digger. In Alejandro González Iñárritu’s new film, Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an aging, foul-mouthed oil tycoon who must save the world when one of his rigs triggers a terrifying environmental catastrophe. With saggy prosthetics, a quirky Southern accent, and a thoroughly unpleasant demeanor, Cruise is upending his audience’s expectations by playing the least likely character to try to save the world, taking swipes at a few satirical targets along the way. But the excitement around Digger isn’t down to Cruise taking on his first weird role. Rather, it’s a return to the subversive material that Cruise used to pursue to shake up his career.
Peppered throughout Cruise’s filmography are dark, psychologically probing dramas, not to mention strange misfires that give insight into his mythicized work ethic and memorable comedy roles that cast him in a humiliating new light. To mark Digger’s release, we put together a list of the best subversive Tom Cruise movies that, together, bring us closer to Hollywood’s most unique leading man in unexpected ways.
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10. The Color of Money (1986)
Years before Cruise would initiate his own old-timer vs. young buck legacy sequel, he played an upstart youngster against Paul Newman in this Martin Scorsese-directed sequel to pool hustler classic The Hustler. Cruise plays Vincent, a vain, conceited brat who shoots pool like a boss but is a far cry from the sophisticated swagger of Newman’s Fast Ed Felson. Cruise’s toothy grin and gelled hair make Vincent a very punchable rival (Timothée Chalamet is definitely channeling him in Marty Supreme’s pool hustling scene), and the role is perhaps the origin point of the obsession with peak performance that would later define Cruise’s entire ethos.
9. Cocktail (1988)
A shining example of the cheesy commercial junk that could be a smash hit in the ‘80s, Cocktail is set in the blossoming world of “flair bartending,” where bartenders first pioneered the art of making cocktails with lots of juggling and trick shots for an excited crowd. Cruise is Brian Flanagan, a young hotshot who goes from hip and happenin’ New York bars to idyllic Jamaica joints while fostering dreams of owning his own bar. (Despite having no involvement in the production, T.G.I. Friday’s founder Alan Stillman would claim “Tom Cruise played me!”) Cocktail is Cruise at the apex of his Reagan-era braggadociousness; like Risky Business, it is a film about how young Americans should consider the sexy, cool life of an entrepreneur.
8. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000)
In the second half of the Mission: Impossible series, every set piece is rigidly engineered, every stunt is extensively hyped, and every decision runs past Cruise. While he was always a major star, back when each film was helmed by a different director-for-hire, Cruise didn’t hold the franchise reins as fiercely as he later would. Enter the black sheep of the Mission: Impossible family, where John Woo turned Ethan Hunt into a long-haired adrenaline junkie whose drive to save the world turns him into a badass avenging angel during a slow-mo and dove-filled climax. It’s a millennium-age riff on James Bond where Cruise pushes the Hollywood action hero to a messianic extreme–and it’s sort of wonderful.
7. Collateral (2004)
Collateral is the rare film to cast Tom Cruise as an outright villain, and it’s fitting that Vincent—the professional hit man who spends a long night picking off targets with the help of cab driver Max (Jamie Foxx)—is a cutthroat businessman, an alienated nihilist who’s never met a meek man he didn’t try to manipulate. This is modern sociopathy, says Michael Mann’s excellent Los Angelean thriller, a silver fox contractor who flies by night and belittles his chauffeur. Cruise is unnervingly good in the role; although he’s no stranger to intense performances, he takes advantage of Vincent’s blackpilled mindset and erratic personality (“Yo homie, is that my briefcase?”) which goes against the more wholesome “Mr. Movies” charm he wears today. Vincent has Cruise’s dedication but no heroism, and wields his intimidating skill without any showmanship.
6. Legend (1986)
Ridley Scott followed up Blade Runner with another dazzling, otherworldly film that flopped to later become a cult classic. If you remember anything about Legend, it’ll be Tim Curry’s staggering Lord of Darkness, and not 21-year-old Tom Cruise’s performance as Jack, a pantless fairytale hero who tries to save a princess (Mia Sara). Cruise’s co-stars act circles around him, and the sumptuous production design and ensemble of fairy creatures all make Cruise feel a little lost in the fantasy milieu, adding another degree of bafflement to Scott’s underrated film. All of this cements the film’s place on this list—playing a romantic forest boy in an immersive but confusing fantasy film is exactly the type of career move Cruise never repeated after hitting the A-list.
5. Magnolia (1999)
In Magnolia, Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, essentially patient zero for what we know today as a “Manosphere Influencer.” Rewatching in 2026, T.J. Mackey’s pick-up artistry seminar—where the leather-vested guru (and grifter) commands feckless followers to “respect the cock”—is both disturbing and prescient. Over 25 years after the release of Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic drama, Mackey’s evangelical misogyny is currently the most enticing resource for boys learning about masculinity and gender online. When a female journalist exposes Mackey’s fabricated rags-to-riches narrative, the bristling, bullish tension that Cruise channels feels uncannily close to several of his real-life combative interviews where the actor has flared up at a pushy reporter. Mackey fears the vulnerability that no character in Magnolia is marked safe from, and Cruise’s immersion in the role (including contributing dialogue to PTA’s script) underlines how fragile and fraught Cruise’s own star persona has felt at different points in his career.
4. Interview with the Vampire (1994)
The first screen adaptation of The Vampire Chronicles saga stars an impeccably salacious Cruise as Anne Rice’s greatest creation, the manipulative bloodsucker Lestat. Co-star Brad Pitt hated working on the film, but his flat performance as sensitive vampire Louie only makes Cruise shine brighter—even though Lestat is absent from most of the second half. Lestat walks a fine line between controlled sophistication and unbound animalism, a blond dandy situated in the seductive, narcissistic common ground shared by the aristocracy and vampires. Not everyone expected Cruise to excel, especially the original author—but after seeing Cruise in the film, Rice profusely apologized. Director Neil Jordan would approve of the film’s high ranking; according to a recent interview on the film, Lestat gave the actor a much-needed opportunity to explore “the non-Tom Cruise aspects of himself”.
3. Vanilla Sky (2001)
With Cruise in the lead role, this psychological mystery from Cameron Crowe is a baffling cross between Jerry Maguire and Eyes Wide Shut. David Aames is a magazine tycoon playboy who is severely scarred in a car crash and starts wearing a flesh-toned mask as his grasp on reality and dreams begins to slip. Whenever the romantic story between David and his intellectual infatuation Sophia (Penelope Cruz, reprising her role from the original Spanish film Open Your Eyes) gets too gooey and clichéd, Vanilla Sky twists in a new existential or dystopian direction. The story’s frequent surprises push Cruise into a paranoid and hysterical tenor of performance that gives the film an added intense and slippery edge. Immersed in a role that grapples with the malleability of fantasy and mortality, Cruise began the 21st century proving he still thrived in weird, uncharted territory.
2. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Cruise’s Bill Harford really, really wants to cheat on his wife. He’s a young, rich New York doctor with a beautiful family, but when he finds a breadcrumb trail leading to a secret sex society, he can’t resist following it—even though he risks being humiliated in his pursuit of illicit pleasure. Stanley Kubrick’s psychosexual and slyly funny illuminati film casts Cruise as a yuppie brimming with repressed desire and fear of emasculation. The tightness and frustration that grips Bill on his adulterous odyssey—which results in him being exposed at a secret masked ball—feels like the ultimate counterpoint to Cruise’s boyish action star persona. He’s head-to-toe anxiety and hubris, as if Kubrick is purposefully undermining his celebrity and masculinity—after all, Bill’s highly desired wife Alice is played by Cruise’s then-wife Nicole Kidman. Like with Digger, Cruise is totally in service of an auteur’s canny vision; unlike Digger, it’s hard to tell if he’s in on the joke.
1. Tropic Thunder (2008)
Tom Cruise was so game for his role in Tropic Thunder—Ben Stiller’s Hollywood satire from a bygone era when studio comedies could be event cinema—that for years he was more associated with dancing to Ludacris than being an action star. More than his sterling and disquieting dramatic work in the ’90s, we’re convinced this broad, prosthetics-clad bozo performance is the biggest influence on Digger Rockwell. With a range of cellphones and webcams in his fortress-like office, studio mogul Les Grossman battles to stop the Vietnam war production from going belly up—he doesn’t care if he’s screaming out a rookie director or a Golden Triangle drug gang. Balding, covered in fuzzy body hair, and filling out his padded suit, Grossman is an absurd caricature that Cruise animates with startling comic intensity. It’s a shame Cruise hasn’t repeated a scene-stealing supporting role like this again, as he clearly relishes being grubby and ridiculous in short, sharp doses. Pick your favorite Les Grossman gag, there are no wrong answers—but first, make sure to take a big step back…
Rory Doherty is a critic and journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His work can be found at British GQ, Vulture, Inverse, AV Club, and other publications. He can be found on Twitter/X at @roryhasopinions
