Tom Cruise's Top Five Movies

Christian Hoffer

08/01/2015 01:00 pm EDT

Tom Cruise might stand at 5'7", but he's one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. When Cruise isn't jumping on couches on talk shows or promoting Scientology, he's usually busy making box office smash hits, with over twenty of his films reaching the $200 million mark. After soaring into Hollywood on the back of Top Gun, the actor solidified his spot as an A-list action star with the Mission Impossible franchise. Despite turning 53 earlier this year, age hasn't slowed him down a bit. Cruise continues to deliver hit after hit, all the while doing all of his own stunts. Cruise's newest movie, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, hits theatres this weekend. To celebrate, here are our favorite roles from his memorable career.

The Last Samurai

Tom Cruise starred as jaded American soldier Nathan Algren in the 2003 film The Last Samurai. After agreeing to train a fledgling Japanese army during the Meiji Restoration in 1870s, a faction of Japanese traditionalists captured Algren during a skirmish and imprisons him in their remote village. Intrigued by the way of the samurai, Cruise's character learned the Japanese's language and customs, and how to use a Katana, in a 30 minute montage sequence. Featuring great battle sequences hordes of ninjas, skilled samurai, and a Gatling gun, The Last Samurai is one of Cruise's best movies and earned high praise from both critics and fans.

Minority Report

In 2002, Tom Cruise starred in the Stephen Spielberg sci-fi thriller Minority Report, an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick short story. Cruise played a police captain working for the Washington DC "PreCrime" division, which specialized in apprehending criminals before they actually committed a crime. After Cruise is indicted for a murder he'll allegedly commit in the future, he suspects he's being framed and discovers the disturbing truth about the precognitive nature of his department. Minority Report was a thought provoking film and featured "futuristic" technology that would become reality only a few years later. Fox liked the Minority Report concept enough to recycle the movie into a television show, which starts this fall.

Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles

Tom Cruise and a young Brad Pitt starred in this 1994 adaptation of the first novel in Anne Rice's popular Vampire Chronicles series. In the movie, Cruise plays the vampire Lestat, a French vampire who meets and turns Louis de Lac into a bloodsucker. Interview with the Vampire chronicles Lestat and Louis's bloody 200 year history with one another, filled with deceit, tragedy and betrayal. Oddly, the movie only hinted at Lestat and Louis' romantic relationship, which was a major plotline in the book series. Despite its deviation from the books, Interview with the Vampire was one of the biggest modern vampire films until the Twilight films eclipsed its popularity.

Edge of Tomorrow

Do you hate Tom Cruise? Do you want to see him die over and over again in painful and violent fashions? Then Edge of Tomorrow is the movie for you. Based on the Japanese novel All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow is set in a world where aliens called Mimics have invaded Europe. Cruise's character discovers he's trapped in a time loop after reliving the same day over and over, which always ends with his very violent death. Cruise meets a fellow soldier who had faced a similar time loop and learns how to become a super soldier and stop the Mimics once and for all. Edge of Tomorrow was a surprisingly fun and suspenseful sci-fi film that performed mediocrely in the box office, perhaps due to its weird title. Warner Bros would later rebrand the film as Live. Die. Repeat. when releasing the movie on DVD later that year.

Top Gun

The movie that made Tom Cruise a star, Top Gun is a glorious action movie featuring Cruise as Maverick, an ace jet pilot training at the Navy's elite Fighter Weapons School. When he's not wooing his flight instructor or playing beach volleyball, Maverick takes to the sky to provoke international incidents, endanger his wingman and piss off his rival Iceman, who has no mutant ice powers of any kind. The US Navy hailed Top Gun as one of its best recruiting tools and featured the classic hit song Danger Zone by Kenny Loggins. Top Gun is the 1980s defined, a glorious two hour sequence of bad synth music, oozing masculinity and pro-military jargon all wrapped in a cool leather jacket.

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