Tom Cruise; What a Lovely Dick/MI;GP Review

A lot has been made of Tom Cruises fall from grace, I do not have the exact numbers but I would imagine that from 1986 (Top Gun) till 1996 (Jerry Maguire) he was probably the biggest Movie Star in the world. Sure there were other big stars at that time like Mel Gibson, Harrison Ford and Tom Hanks but I feel like if you had a blockbuster script that needed a larger than life male lead he was the first guy to get a phone call. At some point in the late 90's early 00's Cruise's association with the cult of Scientology started to leak into the public conciseness and things started to fall apart for the one time super star. We don't much like Aliens in our religion in this country and after the infamous episode of Oprah it was pretty much over for the little giant.

You might not like the guy personally, lord knows he seems like a total lunatic to me but as an actor Tom Cruise has one distinct talent that he does not get nearly enough credit for; he is remarkably good at playing characters who are dickheads. When one takes a look back at his filmography and looks at every movie that he is actually pretty good in, he is playing a dick of one type or another. There are actually 3 distinct phases that evolve to a natural conclusion whithin his career.

Phase 1: Nice Boys Who Learn to Become Dicks 1983-1986
In both Risky Business and the Color of Money Cruise starts off as an innocence who when attempting to explore the harsh realities of life outside of his small town/suburban existence fails to navigate the world correctly. Fortunately a supper hot prostitute and a burned out gambling addict teach him the value of growing a pair. By the end of his metamorphosis he becomes both a master pimp and professional gambler. A bad ass of sorts is born.

Phase 2: Dicks Who Learn to Love 1986-1996
This was without question Cruise's most commercially successful phase, Top Gun, Rainman and Jerry Maguire are all the stories of men who start off as arrogant pieces of crap but learn with the help of a Good Woman/Retarded Brother/Child that there is more to life than being a piece of shit. People love a redemption story and no one did to better than Cruise.

Phase 3: Screw it, Full on Dickhead 1994-Present
Phase 3 is by fare Tom's least popular phase but it also includes roles that he could realistically be nominated for awards for. In movies like Interview with the Vampire, Collateral, Magnolia and Tropic Thunder he plays unredeemably nasty people but does it almost without question wonderfully. These are men without souls who really kind of like not having a soul, and it is fun for the audience as well.

Phase 4: ????
Believe it or not this blog actually started as a review for the new Mission Impossible movie but I became distracted when I realized that the emotional center of the movie might actually be a robot. Ghost Protocol is one of the cooler action movies that I have seen in a while created by a master craftsman (Brad Bird), the problem with MI:GP is absolutely Cruise. The action is amazing, the side characters are cool and funny but Cruise is essentially the lifeless husk of an action star in the middle of it all. When he is not playing a dickhead Tom has no emotional range, he kicks ass sure but the viewer is not emotionally engaged by the ass that he is kicking because he doesn't seem like there is that much at stake. If Ethan Hunt was a jerk this might have been one of the greatest action movies ever made.

We are left with one very important question; What's next? Will he have a Phase 2 like redemption? Somehow I doubt it. Could Tom with the help of Scientology actually morph into some type of giant living penis? If so, would he be eligible for best actor or would the fine people at the academy have to create a whole new category for it.