“Born on the Fourth of July,” (1989)
Perhaps one of the reasons Cruise could afford to help co-star Dustin Hoffman to the Oscar with “Rain Man” was that he already knew he had his own best shot at that statue coming up next: Oliver Stone‘s “Born on the Fourth of July.” Controversial topic? Big-name director? Character with a disability? Social issues drama? Unglamorous make-under? Check, check, check, check, check. But cynicism aside (admittedly hard in this case) Stone’s account of the story of Vietnam vet Ron Kovic’s painful journey from dedicated Marine to marginalized, alcoholic outsider to anti-war activist is an undeniably rousing film, with a go-for-broke fully invested Cruise performance. And as dismissive as it’s easy to be about this kind of role, calculated for awards attention, the performance has to be a good one to really score on that radar. Cruise, who was the hottest property in the world at that point, holds up his end of the deal: his Kovic is volcanic, angry, embittered but ultimately finds some grace — in fact, any other year he might well have converted his Oscar nod. It was just his bad luck to come up against another wheelchair-bound role: Daniel Day Lewis would take home the statue for ‘My Left Foot.”
“Jerry Maguire” (1996)
It doesn’t have the best rep now, thanks to the cultural penetration/uncoolness of its catchphrases (“Show me the money,” “You complete me,” etc.) and its omnipresence on TV, but leave aside the baggage and this is a terrific film. And Cruise never shone as much as a movie star as he did in his first collaboration with Cameron Crowe, deservedly picking up an Oscar nomination for his trouble. The part was allegedly written for Tom Hanks, but it’s impossible to imagine anyone except Cruise; his yuppie charisma is perfect from the start, with Maguire perfectly walking the line of humulity and dickishness, so you buy every second of his moral awakening. But there’s also a big hint of crazy in the character (something that accurately foreshadows a lot of his subsequent off-screen antics); when Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Rod Tidwell tells him “You are hanging on by a very thin thread,” you wouldn’t disagree. Aside from Cruise, the movie still vies with “Almost Famous” for Crowe’s best, Gooding Jr. and Renee Zellwegger have never been better, and the soundtrack’s pretty great too (forget the CD release, the choice cuts, from the likes of The Replacements and Gram Parsons, weren’t on it).
“Magnolia” (1999)
The end of the last century saw Cruise really chase after acting glory with two potentially controversial, sexually-charged roles, one for Stanley Kubrick and the other with a new kid on the block: Paul Thomas Anderson, who’d broken out two years earlier with the outstanding “Boogie Nights.” Amid the sprawling ensemble of “Magnolia,” Anderson’s Altman-esque tapestry of LA lives drawn together by happenstance, Cruise is the biggest star by far, but it’s a testament to his skills (and the director’s canny use of him, to say nothing of his ability to convince Cruise to take such an atypical role) that Cruise more than holds his own in an ensemble that includes Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, John C. Reilly and many more. As Frank T.J. Mackey, a Neil Strauss-like self-help speaker coaching men on how to “tame the cunt,” he’s vile and electrifying: his monologue to an adoring crowd is a show-stopper, but we also see the wounded boy he is at heart in an emotional final scene that still marks Cruise’s finest piece of screen acting. He’s played morally compromised characters before and since, but this is the most subversive role he’s ever taken, and he tears into his own mythos with extraordinary relish.
