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Knight & Day This 2010 action comedy reunited Cruise with his Vanilla Sky co-star Cameron Diaz. Directed by no less than James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari), Cruise's character is quintessential Cruise, and this should have been the start of a series
The Mummy Cruise's 2017 foray into Universal Monsters territory got a wildly bad rap! I'm not sure if people were thrown by him not trying to be a zany Mummy-buster a la Brendan Fraser, or by the tiular creature being female, but the 61-year-old actor's trademark eye-popping stunts were on hand, and so was a lot of action
Cocktail Known more for a Brian Wilson-free Beach Boys hit theme song ("Kokomo"), Cruise shined in this totally 80's tale of love found, lost, and then found again, with The Karate Kid's girl, and making some mean drinks at the same time
The Last Samurai This epic should enjoy the same rarefied air as Gladiator and Braveheart. As an American soldier-turned-samurai, Cruise is at his most ferocious, while giving the titular samurai, Ken Watanabe, all the room he needs to do his thing. Only a true star would do that
Jack Reacher Is the TV series starring Alan Ritchson infinitely better? Sure. Ritchson is enormous, looking every bit the way the character's creator describes him in his books. But Cruise's first outing as the novel series hero is a gut punch, plain and simple