Tom Cruise

In the Rome chase in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), Tom Cruise keeps his face steady while the car behaves absurdly. Hayley Atwell gives him someone worth being funny with, and his concentration makes the chaos funnier. Cinematographer Fraser Taggart keeps the action visible in flat daylight; editor Eddie Hamilton makes sure we know where everyone is. That combination suits Cruise: we can see the effort, follow the danger and enjoy the joke.

Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986) were early successes, but he continued to take dramatic parts. There was a lead in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and a supporting turn as a motivational speaker in Magnolia (1999). Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible (1996) had established him as both producer and star of a continuing action series. The later concentration on action spectacles has made those departures less frequent.

Neil Jordan gets something more mischievous from him in Interview with the Vampire (1994). As Lestat, Cruise treats the wish for companionship as a licence to dictate how everyone else should live. We laughed at the relish he gives that selfishness, then felt slightly ashamed. Sandy Powell's costumes establish his vanity before he has done much himself. Dante Ferretti's lavish rooms are also persuasive, though the household's repeated complaints can leave us more interested in the furnishings than the people.

Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025) makes the limits of the current approach harder to ignore. Cruise's physical commitment remains a reason to watch, but there is an hour of explanation to sit through before the film lets him get on with it. The film treats Ethan Hunt's choices with such solemnity that the humour of the Rome chase feels sorely missed. Two fine set pieces make it worth considering for the patient, though we would send anyone less committed back to Dead Reckoning Part One first. We would like another director to give him a character as selfish as Lestat.