Best Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked: The 10 Greatest Since 1996 — From Jerry Maguire to Top Gun: Maverick

Steven Spielberg's second film with Cruise, after Minority Report, updates H.G. Wells for a post-9/11 audience and puts the invasion at street level. Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a divorced New Jersey dock crane operator who is plainly not ready for a weekend with his two kids, played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin, let alone for getting them to their mother in Boston while tripods rise out of the ground.

The casting against type is the point. Ray is selfish, out of his depth and often wrong, and the film is at its strongest when it stays with a family running rather than soldiers fighting. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says it "delivers on the thrill and paranoia of H.G. Wells' classic novel while impressively updating the action and effects for modern audiences." It scores 76% on Rotten Tomatoes and 73 on Metacritic, and it grossed about $604 million worldwide in 2005. Tim Robbins turns up in the middle stretch as a survivalist hiding in a basement, the film's most claustrophobic sequence.

Cruise is not the lead in Ben Stiller's war-movie satire, but he walks away with every scene he is in. Under a bald cap, a fat suit and prosthetic hands, he plays Les Grossman, a foul-mouthed studio executive who treats a hostage crisis on his own film set as a budget problem.

It is the most surprising performance on this list: a star known for control playing a man with none, and a sharp joke about the industry that made him. The role earned Cruise a Golden Globe nomination for best supporting actor. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus praises the film's "biting satire" and "subversive humor"; it scores 82% there and 71 on Metacritic, and it took in $195.7 million worldwide. Around him, Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr., who earned an Oscar nomination of his own, play pampered actors stranded in a real jungle after a doomed film shoot, while Grossman runs the crisis from his office phone. His dance over the closing credits is one of the most replayed scenes of Cruise's career.

Michael Mann cast Cruise against everything audiences expected in 2004: gray-haired, gray-suited and cold as Vincent, a contract killer who gets into a Los Angeles cab and forces the driver, Max (Jamie Foxx), to ferry him between five hits in a single night.

Mann shot much of the night-time city on digital video, which gives Los Angeles a grainy, sodium-lit look that still feels modern, and the two-hander in the cab is some of the best acting either star has done. Foxx was nominated for the Oscar for best supporting actor. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus credits "Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise." Scores: 86% on Rotten Tomatoes, 71 on Metacritic; worldwide gross about $220 million. Mark Ruffalo plays the detective who slowly works out what is happening, and Jada Pinkett Smith the prosecutor who ends up on Vincent's list, which turns the last act into a race across the city.

Paul Thomas Anderson's three-hour ensemble drama, set across one day in the San Fernando Valley, gives Cruise a supporting role and arguably his most daring one: Frank T.J. Mackey, a strutting self-help guru who sells a seduction program to men and is hiding a wound he would rather not discuss.

The performance earned Cruise an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor and won him the Golden Globe in the same category. It is a role that only works because he commits to the character's ugliness before showing what is underneath. Rotten Tomatoes calls the film "an eruption of feeling that's as overwhelming as it is overwrought" that holds together thanks to "its fearlessly committed ensemble." It scores 82% and 78, the closest the two aggregators come on this list, though it grossed a modest $48.4 million. Around him are Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, William H. Macy and John C. Reilly, and Mackey's storyline ends at the deathbed of his estranged father, played by Jason Robards.

Doug Liman's adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need Is Kill has the best premise on this list: Cruise plays Major William Cage, a military PR officer with no combat experience who is thrown onto a beach against an alien army, dies within minutes and wakes up to live the same day again.

The film gets real comedy out of watching Cruise, of all actors, be bad at being a hero and die over and over before he learns, and Emily Blunt's Rita Vrataski is a co-lead rather than a sidekick. It underperformed in U.S. theaters and found a second life on home video under its tagline, Live Die Repeat; it ended at $381 million worldwide. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it "gripping, well-acted, funny, and clever." Scores: 91% and 71. Liman, who had directed The Bourne Identity, keeps the repetition from getting tedious by skipping ahead whenever the audience has learned the loop.

Cameron Crowe's sports-agent drama is the start of this list's era and still the purest showcase of Cruise as a romantic lead. Jerry writes a late-night mission statement about caring for clients over money, gets fired for it and walks out with one athlete, Arizona receiver Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and one colleague, Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger).

It gave pop culture "Show me the money!" and "You had me at hello," and it earned Cruise an Oscar nomination for best actor and a Golden Globe win; Gooding won the Oscar for best supporting actor. The film works because it lets Jerry be desperate and a little ridiculous before it lets him be right. It scores 86% on Rotten Tomatoes and 77 on Metacritic, and it grossed $273.6 million worldwide. Crowe wrote the script himself, and Jonathan Lipnicki, as Dorothy's young son Ray, gives the romance much of its pull.

Spielberg and Cruise's first collaboration adapts Philip K. Dick's 1956 short story into a 2054 Washington, D.C., where the PreCrime unit arrests murderers before they kill, based on visions from three psychics. Cruise plays its chief, John Anderton, a true believer until the system names him as a future killer.

It is a chase movie with ideas: about surveillance, free will and grief, since Anderton runs PreCrime in the shadow of his own son's disappearance. Its gesture-driven computer screens and personalized ads became shorthand for the near future. Critics rated it highly across the board: 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and 80 on Metacritic, the second-best Metascore here. It grossed $358.4 million worldwide. Colin Farrell plays Danny Witwer, the Justice Department agent auditing PreCrime, and Samantha Morton plays Agatha, the precog whose missing vision gives the film its title. Max von Sydow plays Lamar Burgess, the founder of PreCrime and Anderton's mentor.

Thirty-six years after the original, Joseph Kosinski's sequel brings Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell back to train a group of young Top Gun graduates, among them the son of his late wingman Goose, for a mission that looks close to suicidal.

The aerial footage was filmed with the cast in real jets rather than in front of screens, and it shows. The film became Cruise's biggest hit by far at about $1.5 billion worldwide, and it was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, winning best sound. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says it "surpasses its predecessor in wildly entertaining style." Scores: 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and 78 on Metacritic; the lower Metascore is the only reason it is not higher here. Miles Teller plays Rooster, Goose's son, Jennifer Connelly plays Maverick's old flame Penny, and Val Kilmer returns as Iceman in a brief, affecting scene. Ed Harris opens the film as an admiral who would like to ground Maverick for good.

Christopher McQuarrie's third Mission film sets Ethan Hunt against a rogue artificial intelligence, the Entity, and a world of governments that all want to control it. Hayley Atwell joins as Grace, a thief who becomes Ethan's reluctant partner.

Its signature stunt, Cruise riding a motorcycle off a cliff in Norway and opening a parachute on the way down, is real, and the film is built around set pieces like it, including a long fight on a speeding train. The consensus line at Rotten Tomatoes says it "proves this is still a franchise you should choose to accept." It scores 96% and 81, the franchise's best Metascore after Fallout, and grossed $571.1 million worldwide. Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames and Rebecca Ferguson return from earlier films, and the story continued in The Final Reckoning in 2025. Esai Morales plays Gabriel, the Entity's human agent and a figure from Ethan's past.

McQuarrie became the first director to make two Mission films with Fallout, and he and Cruise delivered the series' high point. Ethan Hunt, hunting stolen plutonium, is saddled with a CIA minder played by Henry Cavill, and the plot moves through Paris, London and Kashmir.

Cruise performed a high-altitude HALO skydive, flew the helicopter himself in the climactic chase and broke his ankle on a rooftop jump in London that stayed in the cut. Rotten Tomatoes' consensus calls it "fast, sleek, and fun" and says it sets "yet another high mark for insane set pieces." With 98% from 444 critics and an 87 on Metacritic, it has the best numbers of any film Cruise has made. It grossed $791.1 million worldwide. Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Angela Bassett and Vanessa Kirby fill out a cast that never lets the plot stall between stunts. Sean Harris returns as the anarchist Solomon Lane, the first villain to carry over from one Mission film to the next.