Reply #58: Good question

[ForrestGump]

Perhaps it's the wacko-Scientologist thing. I find Scientology pretty disgusting, not least because it's such a patently obvious scam (I mean far more so, and intended to be so from the very start, than what most people would call 'religion') but I can separate a person's works from their weirdness easily enough -- if that weren't so, I could never watch the work of sadly deranged religious maniac Mel Gibson or far-right neanderthals Robert Duvall and James Woods, and I'd be missing out on some quality work in doing so. Besides, there seem to be a few Scientologist celebrities who're both talented and apparently decent people: the late Isaac Hayes and John Travolta leap to mind.

Tom Cruise can be very stilted and one-dimensional as an actor (then again, so can many of the greats -- Brando and Olivier included, when they're just phoning it in for the paycheck) but, with the right property and the right director, he can be very good. The most recent film I saw him in was Valkyrie and I was very pleasantly surprised not just by the job he did but the overall quality of the production and the most surprising thing of all: a high degree of historical veracity. And I think the best thing about the great and eminently-rewatchable Tropic Thunder was Robert Downey, Jr, but Cruise was great in that wacky role he had. He's done a few very interesting and challenging roles that are worthy and he DOESN'T always play essentially the same character. To name a few, off the top of my head, he was very good in Rain Man, Born On The Fourth Of July, Magnolia (I barely remember it, remembering mostly that it seemed very weird, but I recall thinking it was a good part for him), Collateral, Vanilla Sky (yeah, STILL trying to figure out parts of that movie -- Cameron Crowe is brilliant, but definitely 'unique'), and a few others. I thought he was pretty decent in War Of The Worlds, too, and although I really like The Last Samurai I thought his character or his characterization (or both) was a little one-note and not especially interesting, but that really did turn out to be Ken Watanabe's film (and a great job HE did!).

Anyway, I'm not a huge Cruise fan, or a booster, but I think it's typical of DU for all the hipsters to pile on to negative comments made about people like him, valid or not. He may be a space cadet, personally, but he's brought some worthy roles to the screen over the years. That's all that should really matter, in the end.

Val Kilmer's Iceman in that gay-interest pilot movie (Brokeback Carrier?), small a part as it may have been, was WAY more interesting than Maverick, though...