The lumbering thesis here could be, “Whatever, you guys, Tom Cruise
is great and has always been great.” Every so often we hear about how
lame Cruise is from our friends and in the press, followed by two weeks
of forgiveness as whatever film being released turns out to be, at the
very least, not bad, often with Cruise impressing with his indomitable movie star charm. And then, like in Groundhog Day–or Cruise’s latest, the comic sci-fi actioneer Edge of Tomorrow–the
same sequence begins with everyone, save for the valiant if
out-of-breath Cruise defenders, back to their original dismissals.
Cruise was able to carry a large movie on his name for about 20 years, slipping between genres–action (Mission: Impossible), romance (Jerry Maguire), thriller (The Firm), and character-driven drama (Magnolia)–while,
like a classic movie star, always maintaining his Cruise-ness, his
Cruise-osity, his Cruisoise: the indelible grin and charm underwritten
with a kind of basic Cruise character arc detailing a cocksure guy whose
world is crumbling. This week the overheard banter at a neighborhood
coffee shop, as relates to Edge of Tomorrow, featured some guy
complaining about Cruise (in the manner of Clint Eastwood to the Chair),
“You have no talent and you play the same boring guy over and over
again.”
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