He’s become a modern-day Chuck Yeager, a test-pilot behind the times yet riding the bleeding edge, racing into a void so he can ignore those of his own creation. Tom Cruise introduces us to this complicated man at the beginning of “Top Gun: Maverick” (2022) and then somewhat shoves him aside for the typical testosterone, posturing, good guys and bad guys of the Jerry Bruckheimer action machine. But all that old machinery, it still works pretty darn good, with an extra-large helping of emotional exploitation. Maverick becomes Yoda. He finds his Luke and they go on a Death-Star-like suicide mission.
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For the first time in more than two decades, I sat down and watched “The Color of Money” (1986). Wow. It really holds up. Really. It’s not about billiards. Or Tom Cruise channeling Charlie Sheen. Or Paul Newman’s pornstache and tinted glasses. It’s a character study on gamblers, con artists, what motivates them and what brings them down. Pure Scorsese. Newman recreates his Fast Eddie Felson character from “The Hustler” (a 1961 classic), but you don’t need to have seen it to enjoy this one. And it’s nice watching Cruise play an actual character instead of Tom Cruise Action Hero.
It’s unfortunate Tom Cruise’s personal life created so much baggage for filmgoers to carry into the theater (or keep them out of the theater altogether), because the dude can still make a good movie when given the proper material. As I’m watching “American Made” (2017), a film you could appropriately describe as rollicking in its portrayal of the early 1980s drug trade and CIA meddling in Central America, I was taken by how little Cruise did to his appearance and yet how totally I bought him as a swinging 1970s Cajun airline pilot. It looks easy, but it’s not easy.
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