Somebody still loves you, Tom Cruise
Recently I was mildly surprised to hear that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are getting divorced. Why, only a few days before I had read an interview in People magazine in which Cruise kept banging on about “Kate” and his daughter Suri, and how he was looking forward to a happy 50th birthday celebration with his family. And then this Tuesday Tom turned 50, alone… How could it all have gone so wrong so quickly?
I’ve had a soft spot for Cruise since 2002, a year I spent exclusively watching movies made by one of the Toms, either Cruise or Hanks. I was forced into this because I was living in Russia, where English language movies were in short supply. A recent encounter with a preposterous French movie entitled Trouble Every Day had led me to the epiphany that while bad art house films were just that, even the worst Hollywood movies at least had high production values. It was time for a Tom.
Dostoevsky: He totally gets Tom Cruise.
And so periodically I’d walk from my apartment just off the Arbat to the underpass at Smolenskaya metro station and inspect the VHS (and later, DVD) selection on offer. Working on the assumption that Hanks made better movies than Cruise, I began with his oeuvre. But the first Hanks movie I saw, Castaway, was awful, especially when the blobby man with the beard started talking to a ball, and then cried when the ball went away. Hanks was unpersuasive as a hit man in Road to Perdition, and merely OK in Catch Me if You Can. I couldn’t bring myself to watch The Terminal, in which he plays a bumpkin Eastern European moron trapped in an airport.
Having discovered that Tom Hanks was rancid (although he does a tolerable turn as a child’s plaything in the Toy Story films, I’ll grant you) I turned my attention to Tom Cruise. I think I watched Vanilla Sky first, in which he plays a man with a rubber scar on his face who feels sad. Lots of people hated this movie, but I thought it was tolerable, even though it was shameless rip off of Philip K. Dick’s novel Ubik.
Ubik: Better than Vanilla Sky
Next I watched Jerry Maguire, A Few Good Men, Mission Impossible II, The Last Samurai- you know, the classics. They all had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a more or less coherent plot, so that was nice. I could see that Cruise always tried hard, that he never just knocked off a film for the cash. I especially liked it when Tom Cruise broke into a sprint, which was often, and in Minority Report I was really impressed by the scene where he runs really fast in a straight line because he has to get somewhere in a hurry and doesn’t have a car. I don’t remember where he was going, but I do remember him running. He was running fast.
And as the films rolled by I even saw a few Tom Cruise performances that were actually very good. For instance, his turn as a hit man in Collateral is excellent, even if the plot is incoherent, and he makes for an exceptional sex guru in Magnolia. Perhaps his best role ever however is as the profane film producer Lev Grossman in Tropic Thunder, where he is much funnier than he is in Rain Man.
In short, Tom Cruise is OK by me. He loves his work, he tries hard and he’s nice to his fans. Also, he’s smaller than I am which is nice. So why do people think he’s a weirdo?
Well, there’s all that Scientology stuff I suppose- Xenu and the Thetans and all that. Indeed, there are rumors that Katie Holmes left him because he was preparing to dispatch their daughter to a hardcore Scientology indoctrination camp.
Scientology doesn’t bother me. I once paid a visit to the Scientology center on Hollywood Boulevard and had myself hooked up to an e-meter, which was supposed to read my emotions. The nice lady asked me to think about something stressful and the dial moved. “See! It’s true!” she said. I wasn’t convinced. But, I ask you, do Scientologists throw acid in girl’s faces, or burn down schools? Are they wrecking the relics of Timbuktu? No, so live and let live is what I say.
But what about all that jumping on the couch business? Ah, but that only made me like Tom Cruise more. There he was, a man in his mid-40s, jumping on a couch on TV. He reminded me of Alyosha Karamazov, about whom Dostoevsky wrote: “He had gone beyond the fear of appearing ridiculous.”
In fact, Tom Cruise started out that way, dancing in his underpants in Risky Business. And perhaps this is what I really admire about Tom Cruise: that he jumps on couches, dances in his underwear, and believes in aliens. He is what he is, and he has no fear that you will consider him strange for that.
And so I say, Viva Tom Cruise! Although Eyes Wide Shut really was a lot of rubbish.
Originally published at RIA Novosti, the home of awesome
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Tom Cruise is a very good actor, with lots of charisma and appeal, and has made some genuinely fine films — Minority Report is one of my all-time favorites, and I thoroughly enjoyed the fourth Mission Impossible movie, and a few others whose titles escape me right now. I like Collateral a lot, but mostly because they filmed several scenes in the neighborhood where I used to live, and watching it reminds me of simpler days.
I know people at various levels and positions in the entertainment industry, and they all tell me exactly the same thing: he is an unfailingly polite and charming man.
I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
I agree, Minority Report was good, except for the stuff about his kid which was totally mawkish but hey that’s Hollywood.
I also didn’t hate his War of the Worlds film, though it wasn’t a patch on the 50s psychedelic colors version.
And he does seem to be a genuinely decent man, spending hours on the red carpet with his fans.
Excellent post, as always.
There is some kind of Tom Cruise Synchronicity in the air lately. On my end, I’ve been obsessively compulsively watching EYES WIDE SHUT over and over again, right in time for the Cruise-Holmes split somehow. And just this morning at a local coffee shop, the barista and I got into a friendly discussion about the merit of both EYES WIDE SHUT and VANILLA SKY.
And, as someone who has been watching the Batman films a lot lately, I’ve gotta say there are some similarities between Cruise and Christian Bale. They both could have easily fallen into the pretty boy chasm of Bad Actors, but they have enough courage, like you alluded to, to shed their vanity as necessary, or even better, to make their vanity work for them. Johnny Depp and Leo DiCaprio don’t have this same skill set, in my humble/hyper-critical opinion. They always strike me as too proud to shed their vanity for a role, or not skilled enough to make their vanity work for them.
P.S. I feel like there a few similarities between EYES WIDE SHUT and MULHOLLAND DRIVE. I might be reaching there, but something struck me as vaguely similar the other night during my another of my OCD viewfests. I feel like both films successfully riff on paranoia and fear, albeit in different ways. With Tom Hanks, I like his earlier films, the screwball comedies e.g. THE MONEY PIT and THE MAN WITH ONE RED SHOE.
That Tom Hanks existed so long ago it’s hard to recall him. The Tom Hanks of Dragnet and Big was swallowed by the tedious ‘everyman” and never seen again.
Eyes Wide Shut… I just couldn’t take it seriously. Yes, Kubrick builds up the atmosphere and Cruise and Kidman really throw themselves into it… but then the grand climax, the orgy is so… tame. Bunch of rich dudes in masks watching naked chicks shagging.
And?
I think you’re right re: Cruise shedding his vanity. I can’t take to the serious Leonardo DiCaprio, he strains much too hard for it, though he’s done a few OK movies… like that Christopher Nolan one, the name of which I forget.
But the abandon that you see in Cruise when he goes full Lev Grossman? Impossible.
Oh yeah, I’m definitely on an island with my fascination with EYES WIDE SHUT. The barista I was chatting with this morning also found it peculiar that I liked it. I’m weird with Kubrick — I love him but sometimes he nails it for me and sometimes he doesn’t. I don’t remember being super fond of CLOCKWORK ORANGE, and I know that places me firmly on an island too.
Wasn’t sure if you had seen the earlier incarnations of Hanks or not; I was thinking he probably didn’t become well known outside of America until he started making FORREST CASTAWAY movies and what not…I like the playfulness of his BOSOM BUDDY days and what not…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORKyyHBy6JQ
Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party delivers one of the great acting achievements of our times. Tom Cruise deserved an Oscar for Tropic Thunder. They should make an entire movie of Lev Grossman yelling at people on his cell phone.
I’m pretty much a blank on pre-Forrest Castaway Hanks except for Big and Dragnet and was he in Splash? I have a feeling he was, in the days before Daryl Hannah had turned into a giant-boned scary titan.
I think there were rumors they were going to do a whole Lev Grossman movie, around the time he appeared ona stage with J-Lo, but since then, nothing.
BACHELOR PARTY was a triumph!
Rick: What the hell are you doing?
Brad: I’m slashing my wrist.
Rick: With an electric razor?
Brad: Yeah, I couldn’t find any razor blades.
Rick: Well at least your wrist will be smooth and kissable.