Word: likely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...makes moviegoers feel. They hitched a ride with him in Risky Business and made him a star at 21. They sat in the cockpit of his F-14 as he swaggered through the sky in Top Gun. They perched in a pool hall and watched him wield a cue like a master swordsman in The Color of Money. They flew to the Caribbean to join him in a frothy Cocktail. They traveled with him on a cross- country journey to fraternal reconciliation in Rain Man. And with each adventure, audiences adjusted their estimation of the young man -- from Most Likely...
...mission: the total workhorse, the ultimate party animal. His job -- flying planes, shooting pool, mixing drinks -- is his life. And he is vulnerable as well as volatile. His thin, high voice helps him here: it locates a little boy lost in the clouds of bravado. Moviegoers may also like what they see in Cruise the man: a dedicated actor, utterly absorbed with his craft, who uses his celebrity to get better parts and get better at what he does. With each new film, he has proved he has more to offer than Ray-Ban Wayfarers and a charismatic grin...
...terrific in, say, Top Gun -- the war, the sex, the male bonding -- is found to be toxic here. It is also a one-character story whose lead actor must grow and shrivel, rage and endure in every scene. And Cruise pulls it off. He carries the film heroically, like a soldier bearing a wounded comrade across a battlefield. He is the very best thing in a very big picture...
Casting against type, of course, can lead to a miscast movie. But Cruise jumped at the dare. "I demand a lot of myself," he says. "I want to learn. I can't sit back. I like a challenge, so I create a lot of challenges for myself." For the actor, many of his films provide the perk of being able to test himself, master a new skill. He flew in Navy jets before making Top Gun. He played serious pool for eight weeks before The Color of Money. For Cocktail he tended bar in Manhattan. He plays a race...
...Each scene, whether it means to elegize or horrify, is unrelenting, unmodulated, rabid with its own righteousness. And yet, frequently, the crazy machine works because of its voluptuous imagery. When Ron is wounded in Viet Nam, he collapses backward, and from his mouth a stream of blood spurts like the fountain of lost youth. The hospital sequence is an insider's tour of hell, and the Mexican brothel is an endless emotional purgatory...