Search This Blog

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Caught in a Loop: Tom Cruise

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.

Edge of Tomorrow

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.”

No comments:

Post a Comment