Star: Tom Cruise

The Mummy (2017) – Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella and Russell Crowe

This is primarily a historical / sci-fi thriller movie, with good action, but it also verges on borderline horror, with zombies etc — similar to Blade in this regard; and like Blade, it just about qualifies for listing on this site due to its good action content and being not so unbearably horror.

The action and general production here is of a good standard, but the horror factor is a bit unpleasant to say the least. In a way it’s barely watchable, but I’m going to rate it Above Average in the end.

Tom, Annabelle, Sofia and Russell all deliver strong performances in this movie, as expected.

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (2025) – Tom Cruise

This 3 hour long movie is a messy drama fest. Sure, it’s got action, but the script is all over the place and there’s way too much noisy dialogue between serious action scenes. Tom is also getting on a bit, as are most of the other core cast members – a stark difference from the original Mission Impossible movie.

I rate this movie So-So due to straying so far off-genre, lacking cohesive script and lacking as much cool action we’d expect from an MI movie. Indeed, this could easily be a made-for-Netflix action-drama mini-series, with how the density of quality is so weak. It stinks of cost-saving shortcuts and fluffy padding throughout. You may be tempted to give up watching at any point in this 3 hour movie, and I wouldn’t blame you.

Oblivion (2013) – Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko

Just one year before the epic movie that was Edge Of Tomorrow, this movie sees Tom Cruise in his element, rebelliously flying planes and riding motorbikes, but not in the usual context. Oblivion is a dystopian lethal tech-controlled dictatorship world where what few humans remain on Earth are expected to follow a strict regime.

Although it’s a fairly simple movie in terms of having few characters – the closing credits list a cast of literally 7 characters long before getting into Stunt Coordinators then listing a bunch of background characters who we never get to know; and although it has a potentially over-memorable plot; it still does very well at sustaining attention even after having seen it several times before and recently enough such that many other movies would become unable to entertain again.

On the balance of pros and cons, I’m going to rate it Decent. It doesn’t have the excitement of Edge Of Tomorrow, and isn’t as slick as Hitman, so it’s neither Tom’s nor Olga‘s best movie for my taste, but it’s not terribly far off — it’s in good company.

Morgan Freeman plays a supporting role, as does Andrea Riseborough (as Tom’s partner, until he realises he’s been brainwashed) — they both do a pretty good job — not wowing, but appropriate.

Knight And Day (2010) – Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz

This is quite entertaining, pretty much from the outset, in multiple patches of smooth action in close succession, but it also comes with multiple patches of irritating chaos and pop/junk music/vibes in close succession. A balance of pleasant and unpleasant for the discerning smooth action connoisseur protective of his mood. The appearance of Cameron Diaz‘s face is quite offputting in itself at times – especially when she’s stressed or acting hormonally imbalanced. She looks like an undeclared daughter of Dolph Lundgren. But if you love screaming and pop/party music alongside toiletry expressions of an aged Cameron Diaz during chaotic car journeys, this movie will be right up your street (but this website won’t be).

By 45 minutes in the mood has lifted slightly — Cameron Diaz’s character is onboard and willingly tagging along with Tom Cruise‘s character now, in a happy-go-lucky manner, and the plot is slightly intriguing.

Some of the stunts and interactions are so cheesy it’s borderline satire. Like something from Police Academy.

All in all, considering its balance of pros and cons, this movie probably deserves a Bang Average rating, which is respectable — it beats plenty of mediocre classics, but doesn’t wow by any means.

Gal Gadot played a minor actionless role in the middle — if she were the lead female it would have probably been a more convincing and entertaining movie I reckon.

Jack Reacher 2: Never Go Back (2016) – Tom Cruise

Tom’s age is showing in this movie, significantly beyond the last which was only 4 years prior. He’s moving a bit stiff, and looking a bit tubby and wrinkly. He even looks too anxious in the opening scene to really pull it off well. But he’s still a superstar and is working to a respectable script within a nice genre so we’ll give it a chance.

It’s not a bad movie in the end – it has a long interesting build up, then gets a bit tense and rough towards the end, and is never very complex in terms of plot & script richness or action diversity, but has just enough to entertain us on a similar level to the original. As such, I rate Jack Reacher 2 just about Bang Average, on a par with Jack Reacher 1.

The lead female this time is played by Cobie Smulders and she does a decent job. The baddies are also pretty good here, as are several other members of the supporting cast.

Jack Reacher (2012) – Tom Cruise and Rosamund Pike

This is a mildly entertaining Tom Cruise movie. The action is slow, the drama is mild and intriguing. Tom plays a hotshot character as usual. But the first part particularly worth mentioning is the nasty scene after 45 minutes in – not terribly explicit but quite unpleasant as one goon who messed up is told to chew his own fingers off.

The first hour is rounded off with a comedy sketch of a fight scene where two goons keep getting in each other’s way. But by the 75 minutes in the movie becomes quite gloomy and the mood doesn’t really let up throughout the final hour – the best of this movie has pretty much come and gone already. As such, I’d rate it Bang Average considering the mildness of the excitement early on and the dull ending that followed. That’s not to say there’s no entertainment later on, it just should have been better, considering the set up..

It gets a bit unpleasant when, half an hour before the end, the lead female gets chased and captured by a crooked detective, with the backing of her own father. She gets kidnapped and from this moment on it’s Jack Reacher’s job to save her, and that’s about all that happens.

The main baddies are played by Werner Herzog (the boss, who seems like a genuine psychopath, with vibes of Klaus Schwab minus the eggheadedness) and Jai Courtney (the main muscle, who also played the bully team-leader from Divergent, and the main muscle of the baddies in Divergent 2).

The lead female is played by Rosamund Pike (whose debut movie – after a handful of TV series stints – was playing Miranda Frost in Die Another Day, 2002).

Collateral (2004) – Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx

High expectations are set for action hero movie fans from 60 seconds in as Tom Cruise bumps into Jason Statham – this can’t not be a good movie now! The next 10+ minutes proceed to be a slow but mostly smooth character-building, scene-setting spout of drama as we follow a taxi driver around down. Around the 15 minute mark, Tom Cruise finally gets into the cab and hopefully some action will emerge. The energy is well paced thus far. The screenplay, cinematography and mood-setting is not bad. But the plot is very thin and the script is very slow thus far, so this movie seems like it could go either way – it could be an awesome concept or a terribly underwhelming stinker, let’s see.

In the end it turns out to be somewhere in between. I rate it Below Average. It’s got a cool concept, and a couple of cool actors, but is massively lacking in the action department. Although the genre is pretty good – it’s about a slick-moving professional assassin – the actual action is generally very slow – it’s more like a drama in that regard, minus most of the arguments. It’s not much ado about nothing, but it’s little ado about something. Slightly Below Average seems a fair rating for this movie which does remarkably well in holding attention considering so little is actually going on. It reminds me of an early Connery era Bond movie in this regard, except they had a bit more going on! The ending gets a bit gritty too – thus it’s highly skippable, along with many patches of this movie, if you’ve seen it before.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022) – Tom Cruise

This movie begins quite creatively & memorably, kind of mirroring the structure of the first quarter hour from the original. It looks set to be a decent sequel, even though Tom Cruise has aged about 36 years since then.

Unfortunately, it’s terribly let down by the extended slow drama scene that occupies more than the remainder of the first half hour (and other times throughout the movie); as Tom meets an old flame played by Jennifer Connelley, with old being the operative word – she looks like she’s pushing 50 here; and we meet the rest of the supporting cast – all beta-level actors, including Glen Powell who looks like and assumes the role of a poundshop/dollarstore Val Kilmer with a clean plastic smiling face giving off vibes like Anderson Cooper.

Eventually the gritty drama subsides about 35 minutes in, and we get another exciting bit, similar to what we tasted earlier on. But it doesn’t last long. The exciting bits are very patchy between very boring bits, which themselves are more boring than normal.

Considering its pros and cons, including extensive drama scenes, its elderly romance, its general lack of glamour factor and its general aura being several levels below the original, but still having some strong thrilling moments, I’m going to rate Top Gun: Maverick as Bang Average. So it’s still a respectable movie, but is a couple levels down from the original which was a big hit (both in its own decade, and to this day) while the sequel is just another movie (today and eternally). The strong, lengthy ending kind of makes up for the significant downfall of the middle.

This movie falls victim to the usual sticking point of bing stuck between the genres of fast action and rote drama – the likes of which simply don’t belong in the same movie together, but an ill-educated drama fan trying to also satisfy estranged action movie fans wouldn’t know this – you’ll need to ask an actual action movie fan to learn it, and this is something the directors of this movie seem to have neglected to do, hence the mediocre rating which is a massive missed opportunity considering the apparent flashes of great action, strong scripting, and top-level acting by the main man. An actually attractive lead female and an actually cool co-main star would have made this movie a lot better, but as it stands, it’s pretty average and is carried almost entirely by an aging Tom Cruise.

Top Gun (1986) – Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer

Tom was very young when he made this movie, but he pulls it off.

Forgiving the first 3 minutes which is rather boring and just a way of displaying the opening credits; the next 10 minutes are a strong blend of good music, mildly exciting action (toying with Russian fighter pilots during the cold war, without anyone actually shooting anyone), and a very well played balance of cool calm collectedness assisting someone suffering from a panic attack while flying a jet into landing on an aircraft carrier.

Minus a bit of romance, some slow drama, and some jack-the-lad behaviour, and the tone for the rest of the movie is basically already set. But things are levelled up as of 15 minutes in, when Tom Cruise playing Maverick gets promoted to Top Gun, an elite school for the best fighter pilots in the America. The whole movie was obviously an expensive but effective airforce recruitment campaign, which made for one of the best, most memorable and most rewatchable action hero movies of the 1980s, and fast-tracked Tom Cruise’s career to the very top.

After an excess of drama with not so much fast action in the middle, things get spicy again in the last 20 minutes as a real conflict emerges where Maverick and his fellow Top Gun graudates are called into action. Although simple in concept, the final scene is well executed. Add to that, 5 minutes of drama then 5 minutes of closing credits and that’s the movie done.

It’s quite disgusting how blowing Russian planes, on the Russian side of the border, in a way that probably killed the Russian pilots, who themselves killed nobody, is cheered and celebrated as if scoring in a baseball game or a computer game. But that’s Hollywood for you.

Considering its highs (some great action and script features) and also its downsides (excessive boring drama), and considering its overall impact as a memorable classic that stands out but has considerable flaws, I have to rate this movie as Decent, on a par with other movies of similar balance of pros & cons, including some real classics from the 80s like The Karate Kid (1 and 3) and The Living Daylights (my favourite Bond movie). How could it have been improved even more? Simply more of the good stuff and less of the filler drama – it’s not rocket science. This movie could have easily doubled its thrills and appealed more to action hero movie fans although dramawhores would probably be turned off then.

A stronger supporting cast wouldn’t have been a bad idea either. Tom himself performed very well. Val Kilmer added value too. Guys like Michael Ironside, Tom Skerritt and James Tolkan helped a bit too. And the lead female, Kelly McGillis, wasn’t terrible. But a stronger supporting cast could have significantly benefitted the movie nevertheless. I’d have had Kelly McGillis as a secondary female, with someone more effective above her; I’d have had more powerful characters above the others too, without necessarily getting rid of them. As for Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan, I think they added little value – they were easily replaceable, along with anyone who I didn’t bother to mention.

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014) – Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt

Edge Of Tomorrow (2014)

The first 10 minutes are cleverly designed to build a backstory to this movie, and while it starts off a bit messy, Tom Cruise‘s presence sharpens it up nicely. By 10 minutes in it’s clear Tom Cruise is playing Major William Cage, some top marketing guy for the military who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty, and upon attempting to blackmail a general, finds himself railroaded to the frontline with his rank stripped and nobody believing his story.

By 20 minutes in, the Major is getting his first taste of battle on the front line and it’s a bit of a nightmare, but it’s well executed, and it soon becomes something quite intriguing, when 5 minutes later he dies and his day restarts and everything becomes Déjà Vu. Then 5 minutes later still – now half an hour in – the day restarts again, so it’s now the third instance of the same day. This time he’s less confused, and tries very hard to prove himself and alert everyone what’s going on, but fails only ends up with a taped up mouth. He also tries fighting the aliens proactively using his limited foresight, but dies pretty quickly. Then we see him die quickly again. Then on the fifth attempt he tries talking to the lead female – the Angel of Verdun, Sergeant Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt – and it’s already clear that he’s been here many times before, the movie’s just skipped several iterations. One the next full reset, we see him try a different tact. He subtly proves his strange abilities to predict the future, and assures everyone he’s not trying to avoid the war – he’s now acting enthusiastic and friendly but not controversial at all – this is of course a rouse to gain everyone’s trust so they all lower their guard and he’s free to do what he needs to do – this time it’s meeting up with the woman who told him to come find her when he wakes up. It seems she has the same ability as he does, and knows all about it. There’s a few nice touches of humour here too.

By 50 minutes in, William Cage (Tom Cruise) and Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt) have met Rita’s friend, a top scientist who understands how this alien enemy operates, and what’s causing the day to keep resetting, and everything becomes clear, or at least as clear as it ever will be. Rita starts training Tom in combat skills, which he’s gravely lacking, and she tells him he needs to make sure he dies every day, else he’s out of the game.

It gets a bit tense, gritty and uncomfortable towards the end of the first hour, and it’s safe to say, most of the fun is already gone now. But there’s still nearly an hour left to go. For this reason, although this movie showed great potential to be arguably the best action hero movie ever made, in the end I’m going to settle for a rating of Very Good, which is no mean feat of course.

After a solid 20 minutes of gritty drama and uncomfortable action, the mood picks up with half an hour to go as the Major & Sergeant come up with a new plan and head to HQ to get what they need. Unfortunately though, this refreshing uplift only lasts a few minutes before it gets gritty again and doesn’t let up till the very end. Nevertheless, we can’t discount the great entertainment value of the first hour, making this a Very Good action hero movie on a par with Denzel’s equally great movie The Equalizer from the same year.