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1988, Romance/Comedy, 1h 44m

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Critics Consensus

There are no surprises in Cocktail , a shallow, dramatically inert romance that squanders Tom Cruise's talents in what amounts to a naive barkeep's banal fantasy. Read critic reviews

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Cocktail videos, cocktail   photos.

Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) wants a high-paying marketing job, but needs a business degree first. Working as a bartender to pay for college, Flanagan is mentored by his veteran boss, Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown). Together, their showy tricks and charisma command large crowds and tip payments -- until Flanagan and the cynical Coughlin have a falling out. Flanagan moves to Jamaica to raise enough money to open his own bar, where he falls in love with artist Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue).

Genre: Romance, Comedy, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Roger Donaldson

Producer: Robert W. Cort , Ted Field

Writer: Heywood Gould

Release Date (Theaters): Jul 29, 1988  original

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 10, 2016

Box Office (Gross USA): $77.3M

Runtime: 1h 44m

Distributor: Touchstone Pictures

Production Co: Touchstone Pictures, Interscope Communications

Sound Mix: Surround, Stereo

Cast & Crew

Brian Flanagan

Bryan Brown

Douglas 'Doug' Coughlin

Elisabeth Shue

Jordan Mooney

Laurence Luckinbill

Kelly Lynch

Kerry Coughlin

Gina Gershon

Roger Donaldson

Robert W. Cort

John Mellencamp

Original Music

J. Peter Robinson

Dean Semler

Cinematographer

Neil Travis

Film Editing

Donna Isaacson

John S. Lyons

Production Design

Art Director

Hilton Rosemarin

Set Decoration

Ellen Mirojnick

Costume Design

Heywood Gould

Screenwriter

News & Interviews for Cocktail

50 Worst Summer Movies of All Time

Critic Reviews for Cocktail

Audience reviews for cocktail.

A classic that helped launch Tom Cruise's career. I have never seen this before but I really enjoyed it and I can see why many others also enjoyed it.

So hilariously bad I can't even explain it. There aren't words to describe how awful this is, but I think it's at least deliberately awful...there's no way anyone could've thought this wasn't going to be terrible while they were making it.

This is actually one of my favourite Tom Cruise films.

What has Mr Cruise done to blokes over the years huh. He made us all wanna join the military so we could play with fighter jets and have a cool nickname, play/hustle nine-ball for a living, be a NASCAR driver...but at one point he also made all men wanna become bartenders. The image...behind a slick neon lit bar, fast money and easy sex, who would say no?. Well the plot in this ever so 80's flick is a cocktail of drama in itself!. Kicks off as a loose dumb story about a young guy who learns to be a bartender and throws bottles around awful looking swanky yuppie/suit type bars. From there we get cheating, backstabbing and escapism to Jamaica where a soppy love story breaks out. More backstabbing follows as we proceed to more heartbreak and the involvement with older rich women, much more fun then. Yet more breakup, death of a friend and eventual makeup leading to the obvious happy ending. A veritable rollercoaster of a plot which is totally uninteresting and rather cringeworthy. Watching Cruise pose and strut around with his wide toothy grin and hair that can't decide to be straight or curly is somewhat painful at times. The bar scenes are really quite crap looking back, I remember how people thought this stuff was sooooo cool (laugh out loud!). The cast is also another odd cocktail of choice. Aussie Bryan Brown who never really made much of a splash in Hollywood is a bizarre choice. Whilst Shue was never very attractive in my book and hardly sells her character, so dreadfully vanilla and dull!! geez!!. Brown is just totally uncool and annoying whilst Shue is a wet fish. Add to that the constant flow of hyped over acting and mugging by Cruise...oh god it makes you wanna vomit in your Singapore Sling!. A film for the ladies I think as the only things that interested me was a few female arse shots and the thought of what life would be like as a sex toyboy for a rich middle aged business woman (I would of stuck it out). In places this film is very awkward to watch, bordering on embarrassing. So completely and utterly dated (in a bad way) and serves no purpose other than a history lesson on 80's social gatherings and what people thought was cool employment at the time. A time when Cruise's ego was sky high alongside his over acting, mind you what's new.

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"Cocktail" tells the story of two bartenders and their adventures in six bars and several bedrooms. What is remarkable, given the subject, is how little the movie knows about bars or drinking.

Early in the film, there's a scene where the two bartenders stage an elaborately choreographed act behind the bar. They juggle bottles in unison, one spins ice cubes into the air and the other one catches them, and then they flip bottles at each other like a couple of circus jugglers. All of this is done to rock 'n' roll music, and it takes them about four minutes to make two drinks. They get a roaring ovation from the customers in their crowded bar, which is a tip-off to the movie's glossy phoniness. This isn't bartending, it's a music video, and real drinkers wouldn't applaud, they'd shout: "Shut up and pour!" The bartenders in the film are played by Tom Cruise , as a young ex-serviceman who dreams of becoming a millionaire, and Bryan Brown , as a hard-bitten veteran who has lots of cynical advice. Brown advises Cruise to keep his eyes open for a "rich chick," because that's his ticket to someday opening his own bar. Cruise is ready for this advice.

He studies self-help books and believes that he'll be rich someday, if only he gets that big break. The movie is supposed to be about how he outgrows his materialism, although the closing scenes leave room for enormous doubts about his redemption.

The first part of the movie works the best. That's when Cruise drops out of school, becomes a full-time bartender, makes Brown his best friend and learns to juggle those bottles. In the real world, Cruise and Brown would be fired for their time-wasting grandstanding behind the bar, but in this movie they get hired to work in a fancy disco where they have a fight over a girl and Cruise heads for Jamaica.

There, as elsewhere, his twinkling eyes and friendly smile seem irresistible to the women on the other side of the bar, and he lives in a world of one-night stands. That's made possible by the fact that no one in this movie has ever heard of AIDS, not even the rich female fashion executive ( Lisa Banes ) who picks Cruise up and takes him back to Manhattan with her.

What do you think? Do you believe a millionaire Manhattan woman executive in her 30s would sleep with a wildly promiscuous bartender she picks up on the beach? Not unless she was seriously drunk. And that's another area this movie knows little about: the actual effects of drinking. Sure, Cruise gets tanked a couple of times and staggers around a little and throws a few punches. But given the premise that he and Brown drink all of the time, shouldn't they be drunk, or hung over, at least most of the time? Not in this fantasy world.

If the film had stuck to the relationship between Cruise and Brown, it might have had a chance. It makes a crucial error when it introduces a love story, involving Cruise and Elisabeth Shue , as a vacationing waitress from New York. They find true love, which is shattered when Shue sees Cruise with the rich Manhattan executive.

After the executive takes Cruise back to New York and tries to turn him into a pampered stud, he realizes his mistake and apologizes to Shue, only to discover, of course, that she is pregnant - and rich.

The last stages of the movie were written, directed and acted on automatic pilot, as Shue's millionaire daddy tries to throw Cruise out of the penthouse but love triumphs. There is not a moment in the movie's last half-hour that is not borrowed from other movies, and eventually even the talented and graceful Cruise can be seen laboring with the ungainly reversals in the script. Shue, who does whatever is possible with her role, is handicaped because her character is denied the freedom to make natural choices; at every moment, her actions are dictated by the artificial demands of the plot.

It's a shame the filmmakers didn't take a longer, harder look at this material. The movie's most interesting character is the older bartender, superbly played by Brown, who never has a false moment. If the film had been told from his point of view, it would have been a lot more interesting, but box-office considerations no doubt required the center of gravity to shift to Cruise and Shue.

One of the weirdest things about "Cocktail"' is the so-called message it thinks it contains. Cruise is painted throughout the film as a cynical, success-oriented 1980s materialist who wants only to meet a rich woman and own his own bar. That's why Shue doesn't tell him at first that she's rich. Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where he allegedly chooses love over money, but then, a few months later, he is the owner and operator of his own slick Manhattan singles bar.

How did he finance it? There's a throwaway line about how he got some money from his uncle, a subsistence-level bartender who can't even afford a late-model car. Sure. It costs a fortune to open a slick singles bar in Manhattan, and so we are left with the assumption that Cruise's rich father-in-law came through with the financing. If the movie didn't want to leave that impression, it shouldn't have ended with the scene in the bar. But then this is the kind of movie that uses Cruise's materialism as a target all through the story and then rewards him for it at the end. The more you think about what really happens in "Cocktail," the more you realize how empty and fabricated it really is.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Cocktail (1988)

100 minutes

Laurence Luckinbill as Mr. Mooney

Tom Cruise as Brian Flanagan

Lisa Banes as Bonnie

Elisabeth Shue as Jordan Mooney

Bryan Brown as Doug Coughlin

Produced by

• Robert W. Cort

Directed by

• Roger Donaldson

Screenplay by

• Heywood Gould

Photographed by

• Dean Semler
• Neil Travis
• J. Peter Robinson

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The Ebert Fellows Go to True/False

A young, ambitious New York bartender becomes the toast of Manhattan's Upper East Side. But when he moves to Jamaica and finds true love, he gains a new perspective on his life.

Tom Cruise is electrifying as Brian Flanagan, a young, confident, and ambitious bartender who, with the help of a seasoned pro (Bryan Brown), becomes the toast of Manhattan's Upper East Side. But when he moves to Jamaica and meets an independent artist (Elisabeth Shue), their vivid romance brings a new perspective to the self-centered bartender's life.

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Cast & Crew

Brian Flanagan

Bryan Brown

Douglas 'Doug' Coughlin

Elisabeth Shue

Jordan Mooney

Laurence Luckinbill

Traditional values trump glitz. Not for kids.

• Average 4.2

Information

© 1988 TOUCHSTONE PICTURES

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From 1988: How Tom Cruise learned to be a flashy bartender

Actor interviewed dozens of pros to learn the craft of tending bar for cocktail.

Tom Cruise on his research for Cocktail

Social sharing.

Thirty years ago, Tom Cruise was already a bona fide movie star.

He'd already been seen on the big screen in The Outsiders , Risky Busines s, Top Gun and The Color of Money .

Broken bottles, fearful onlookers

"When I started out, I interviewed about 35 bartenders," said Cruise, explaining that he needed to be able to convincingly play a flashy, high-end bartender (which might be called a mixologist today).

Cruise said Cocktail  needed to be able to convince the audience that his co-star Bryan Brown was "the best bartender they've ever seen" and that Cruise's own character could then develop into a "star bartender" in his own right.

The mega-star admitted to breaking five bottles when filming and to losing a bet in the process. Brown broke only four, which left Cruise a bottle short of victory.

"Well, that's not bad because that's hard to do," Midday co-host Valerie Pringle told him.

"I was surprised. I thought I was going to break many more than that," Cruise said. "The people that were in front of me, though, were a little nervous when we were flipping the bottles."

Mixing It Up: Exploring the Iconic Cocktails from the Movie “Cocktail”

• developer on September 19, 2023

“Cocktail,” the 1988 romantic drama film directed by Roger Donaldson, is not just a classic of its time; it’s a celebration of mixology and the art of crafting the perfect cocktail. Starring Tom Cruise as the charming bartender Brian Flanagan, the film takes us on a journey through the world of bartending, love, and friendship. Along the way, it introduces us to several iconic cocktails that have since become staples in the world of mixology. In this article, we’ll delve into the delicious details of these cocktails, their history, and how you can recreate them at home.

The Red Eye

Our journey through the world of “Cocktail” begins with the Red Ey e, a simple yet refreshing cocktail. In the movie, Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) impresses his mentor Doug Coughlin (Bryan Brown) by making this drink for the first time.

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. tomato juice
• 1 dash of hot sauce
• 1 dash of Worcestershire sauce
• Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

• Fill a shaker with ice.
• Add vodka, tomato juice, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.
• Shake well.
• Strain into a chilled glass filled with ice.
• Garnish with a lemon wedge and celery stick.

The Red Eye is a classic cocktail, often referred to as a “Bloody Mary Lite.” It’s perfect for those who enjoy the tangy flavors of tomato juice and a hint of spice.

The Woo Woo

Next up is the Woo Woo , a sweet and fruity cocktail that makes an appearance in the film during a beach party scene.

• 1/2 oz. peach schnapps
• 3 oz. cranberry juice
• Add vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice.
• Strain into a chilled glass.
• Garnish with a lime wedge or a cherry.

The Woo Woo is a delightful and easy-to-make cocktail, making it a favorite at parties and gatherings.

The Jamaican Bobsled

The Jamaican Bobsled is another fun and tropical cocktail featured in the movie. It’s a colorful and flavorful drink that reflects the movie’s beachy vibes.

• 1 1/2 oz. white rum
• 1/2 oz. coconut cream
• 1/2 oz. blue curaçao
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• Crushed ice
• Fill a blender with crushed ice.
• Add white rum, coconut cream, blue curaçao, and pineapple juice.
• Blend until smooth.
• Pour into a chilled glass.
• Garnish with a pineapple slice and a cherry.

The Jamaican Bobsled is a tropical paradise in a glass. Its vibrant blue color and refreshing flavors make it a hit at beach-themed parties.

• The Last Barman Poet

Named after Brian Flanagan’s poetic ambitions in the movie, The Last Barman Poet is a cocktail that represents the artistry and creativity of bartending.

• 1 1/2 oz. light rum
• 1/2 oz. lime juice
• 1/2 oz. simple syrup
• 1/2 oz. pineapple juice
• Lime twist for garnish
• Add light rum, blue curaçao, lime juice, simple syrup, and pineapple juice.
• Shake vigorously.
• Strain into a chilled martini glass.
• Garnish with a lime twist.

The Last Barman Poet is a cocktail that pays homage to the creativity and passion of bartenders. Its bright blue color and balanced flavors make it a true work of art.

The Flaming Dr. Pepper

In one of the film’s most memorable scenes, Brian Flanagan and Doug Coughlin introduce the audience to the Flaming Dr. Pepper , a daring and fiery cocktail that involves lighting the drink on fire before consuming it.

• 3/4 oz. amaretto liqueur
• 1/4 oz. high-proof rum (overproof)
• 1/2 glass of beer (lager)
• Pour the amaretto into a shot glass.
• Float the high-proof rum on top of the amaretto.
• Fill a beer glass halfway with beer.
• Carefully ignite the amaretto and rum in the shot glass.
• Drop the flaming shot glass into the beer glass.
• Blow out the flame, and drink the cocktail quickly through a straw.

The Flaming Dr. Pepper is not for the faint of heart, but it’s undoubtedly a showstopper at any gathering.

But here is more. Here is a list of cocktails that are either made, mentioned, or play a role in various scenes throughout the film:

• Bloody Mary
• Brandy Alexander
• The Righteous Bison
• Black Russian
• Jamaican Bobsled
• The Frozen Banana Daiquiri
• Planters Punch
• Irish Coffee
• Old-Fashioned
• Vodka Martini
• Amaretto Sour
• Screwdriver
• Tom Collins
• Dry Martini
• Flaming Dr. Pepper

The movie “Cocktail” may be a love story, but it’s also a love letter to the art of mixology and the delightful world of cocktails. Each of the cocktails featured in the film has its unique charm and flavor profile, making them a hit with fans and cocktail enthusiasts alike. Whether you’re sipping on a Red Eye, enjoying the tropical vibes of the Jamaican Bobsled, or daring to try the Flaming Dr. Pepper, these cocktails are a testament to the creativity and craftsmanship that go into the world of mixology. So, the next time you watch “Cocktail,” consider shaking up one of these iconic drinks to enhance your viewing experience.

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Cruise was never been a bad actor, but this film about a flaming sex symbol has elevated him to definitive stardom. [Full review in Spanish]

Cocktail kicks off with an entertainingly lighthearted opening stretch revolving around Brian's initial entry into the world of bartending...

Cocktail is a vacuous throwback to Saturday Night Fever -- without the cultural novelty. The script is spiked with some comic lines, but overproof doses of inadvertent humor kill the effect.

As if realizing that his star hasn't smiled for 15 minutes, Donaldson tacks on a goody-goody ending that would shame the Care Bears. How to sum up what went wrong? Cruise has a line in the movie: "Flat beer from rusty pipes."

Ultimately, the ideas in this film fall as flat as stale beer and honest emotions are as watered down as cheap whiskey. This Cocktail is definitely on the rocks.

Cocktail is so steeped in corn, the drama seems comedic and the comedy is about as funny as a hangover.

Cocktail is a bottle of rotgut in a Dom Perignon box.

The pairing of old-hand Brown and young-hand Cruise may have been meant to remind us of Cruise and Paul Newman; if so, think of this as The Color of Counterfeit Money.

Perhaps the best one can say for this bland concoction mixed by agents and the studio executives is that every bartender in Hollywood wants to be Tom Cruise and that suffices as an ironic subtext.

It may not be a megaton bomb, but Cocktail is definitely of the Molotov type.

Additional Info

• Genre : Drama, Comedy
• Release Date : July 29, 1988
• Languages : English, Spanish
• Captions : English, Spanish
• Audio Format : 5.1

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The Best Tom Cruise Year Is ...

… maybe not the most obvious one. But when Cruise made ‘Cocktail’ and ‘Rain Man,’ he unlocked a new side that would define the quintessential movie star’s career for decades to come.

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You’ve probably already heard the stories about Tom Cruise’s preposterous level of effort in the new Mission: Impossible—Fallout, in which he plays the role of Ethan Hunt for the sixth time in 22 years. Of course the aggressively ageless 56-year-old performs his own stunts. At one point, he broke his ankle after slamming into the side of a damn building—and then pulled himself up, and ran across the roof. And then there’s the spectacular helicopter chase sequence, for which Cruise (again, of course ) learned how to really pilot a helicopter. Elsewhere, when he’s not risking life and actual limbs in Fallout , he is doing that rigorous, purposeful Tom Cruise sprint , like Jim Fixx on a Red Bull bender.

That’s the one thing everyone — fans and critics alike — always says about him: Tom Cruise works hard. Working hard is his brand. He’s, well, worked very hard to make it so.

But what if he didn’t work quite so hard? Not to suggest that Tom Cruise has ever coasted, exactly. But what if he let himself lay back just a little bit and allowed the centrifugal force of his one-in-a-billion movie-star charisma propel him forward? Is it possible that this would make the longest-tenured A-list movie star since Clint Eastwood even more watchable?

Almost 30 years ago to the day, millions of people lined up to see the latest Tom Cruise movie, and the stakes couldn’t have been lower. The mission was not impossible; it was impossibly mundane. What mattered were dreams … and cocktails … Cocktails & Dreams, if you will. And people were fine with that! All it took to put butts in seats was this simple log line: Tom Cruise plays a sexy bartender . That’s it. Nothing else was required — no special effects, no elaborate cinematic universe, and certainly no broken ankles.

This is not to say that Tom Cruise sloughed off in Cocktail, one of the more popular, and least reputable, films in his oeuvre. He tossed bottles in synchronized motion with costar Bryan Brown. He rode horses on the beach with love interest Elisabeth Shue. He resisted the string-bikini’d bod of Kelly Lynch. He reacted with appropriate pathos to one of the all-time left-field suicide scenes. He put in work.

When was the last time you watched Cocktail ? Oh, you’ve never watched Cocktail ? Wow … I really don’t want to spoil this one. I’ll run down the essentials: Cruise plays Brian Flanagan, a wannabe business tycoon and military veteran (!) who moves to the big city in order to get rich, and then becomes a bartender at a TGI Fridays. And that’s basically all you need to know.

What Cocktail is really about is the desirability of Tom Cruise circa 1988. Put another way: Everybody in this movie wants to fuck him — Shue, Lynch, even Brown, kind of. Women literally paw at his legs when he stands on a bar top to recite tavern-inspired poetry. (This is also a thing that happens in Cocktail. ) He is, in no uncertain terms, a sex object.

“Doug says you’re incredible with women — a real lady-killer,” Lynch drools near the end of Cocktail as she corners a semi-willing Cruise. “What’s your secret weapon?”

“Well,” Cruise says, flashing his trademark toothy grin, “what you see is what you get.”

He’s not lying.

Cocktail played a pivotal role in consolidating Cruise’s burgeoning stardom, a star vehicle built on the flimsiest of premises that grossed $78 million domestically (and another $93 million around the world), good for the ninth-best box-office haul of 1988, an achievement that could only be attributed to Cruise’s mega-watt marquee appeal. But it never fully registered as a career triumph. Not long after Cocktail unleashed so many dubious fads on American pop culture — including two of the era’s most grating pop hits, the Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy,” to say nothing of acrobatic mixology — Cruise distanced himself from the film.

“It’s painful as hell,” Cruise says of watching Cocktail in a 1990 Rolling Stone profile . “I mean, I worked my ass off on that movie.” Again with the work ethic, Tom.

Defenders of Cocktail have tried to couch it as a “secretly dark” look at ’80s “greed is good” culture, a depiction not far off from the eccentric barfly novel on which it is based. Screenwriter Heywood Gould, who also wrote the book, later claimed that the script went through 40 different iterations, with the film’s studio, Disney, constantly pressing to make Flanagan younger, more likable, and, ultimately, more Cruise-like. But even after all of those revisions, Cocktail was still watered down further during production.

“It was a much darker movie,” Lynch told The A.V. Club in 2012 , “but Disney took it, reshot about a third of it, and turned it into flipping the bottles and this and that.”

When I revisited Cocktail recently, I could see traces of the more biting film it might have been. Flanagan is a prototypical working-class stiff who is twisted by capitalism into a money-obsessed douche, lending his blandly handsome bro-ness a faintly tragic lilt. But I prefer to accept Cocktail on its own compromised, cheesy terms. Forget the Reagan-era subtext. This is an enjoyable dumb movie, and it is best appreciated as a superficial confection. What you see is what you get.

And it deserves better. Cocktail isn’t any campier than Top Gun , with its slow-motion volleyball action, overwrought “Take My Breath Away” love scene, and Val Kilmer’s playfully unrestrained homoeroticism. So why is Cocktail the movie that Cruise has to live down?

In May, Cruise started filming Top Gun: Maverick , which is currently slated to arrive in theaters around this time in 2019. Cruise started teasing the possibility of a sequel to the 1986 film two years ago, on Jimmy Kimmel Live! He is, as always, committed to the enterprise, even if it is wholly unnecessary. But the closest Cruise will likely ever come to reviving Cocktail was a career-spanning bit with another late-night host, James Corden, on that same 2016 press cycle. This is a shame — I would rather watch a prequel delving into Flanagan’s mysterious Army background than a movie about Maverick’s kid . Call it Cocktail: First Blood. (I will nevertheless watch the movie about Maverick’s kid.)

This willingness to revisit Top Gun , and reticence to embrace Cocktail , presumably boils down to one thing for Cruise: He had to train in an F-14 to make Top Gun , whereas Cocktail only needed that dumb hook — Tom Cruise plays a sexy bartender — to be a success. He worked hard on Cocktail , but he didn’t have to work hard. He just had to be Tom Cruise.

But he didn’t want to be that Tom Cruise anymore. And he wouldn’t be ever again.

For millennials and Generation Z, there’s never been a world in which Cruise wasn’t among the most famous people on the planet. (August 5 marks the 35th anniversary of Risky Business , Cruise’s big breakthrough, released one month after his 21st birthday.) He’s practically an elemental property at this point.

But there have been oscillations in his fame. You might remember them, the way you can recall down seasons for a dynastic sports franchise. Like in the mid-’00s, during that disastrous press cycle for 2005’s War of the Worlds , marred by the Oprah Winfrey incident and that time he got testy with Matt Lauer. (When does Cruise get awarded his revisionist history bonus points for the last one?) The past few years have been another struggle: 2016’s Jack Reacher: Never Go Back and 2017’s The Mummy were widely derided duds. But his late-’10s period hasn’t been as down as you might think: Last year’s American Made , while not exactly great, is awfully hard not to watch when it pops up on airplanes or HBO.

Cruise has been around for so long, all while working steadily and prolifically, that you can break his career into notable eras, or even memorable years. Many of his notable films come in bunches. There’s 1986, the year of Top Gun and The Color of Money , his first movie to gross more than $100 million and his first “adult” drama . There’s 1996, the “blockbuster” year, distinguished by Jerry Maguire and the first Mission: Impossible , which combined grossed more than $731 million worldwide. (That’s about $1.2 billion in 2018 dollars.) There’s 1999, the “prestige” year, with Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia , neither of which nabbed him that elusive Oscar . And then there’s the opposite of a prestige year, 2012, marked by late-career guilty pleasures Rock of Ages and (the pretty good!) first Jack Reacher film.

But if I’m picking my favorite Tom Cruise year, I’m going back to 1988, his “transitional” year, when he released Cocktail at the end of July and Rain Man , his road movie–buddy picture with Dustin Hoffman, one week before Christmas. Between the release of those radically different movies, from October to December, he filmed Born on the Fourth of July with Oliver Stone, playing the paraplegic Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic, which garnered him his first Oscar nomination.

Rain Man was even more successful than Cocktail , tallying a worldwide gross of nearly $355 million and four Oscars. (It was no. 1 at the American box office that year, which seems all the more incredible in these franchise-saturated times.) Cruise undoubtedly was a primary reason for the former, though he wasn’t nominated for an Academy Award. But Rain Man gave him something far more valuable — a pathway to the “mature” second act of his professional life, to the success of Born on the Fourth of July and beyond.

When you look at the best years of Cruise’s career, there’s an obvious yin-and-yang quality, typically balancing an action tent-pole like Top Gun and Mission Impossible with a “smaller” film such as The Color of Money or Jerry Maguire. This contrast is starkest in ’88, between the disreputable camp classic and the award-winning family drama.

An oft-repeated complaint about Cruise’s recent filmography is the loss of that balance. It’s been this way for about 15 years. In the early ’00s, he made two risky sci-fi films, 2001’s Vanilla Sky and 2002’s Minority Report , and his overall best movie of the 21st century, 2004’s Collateral , along with requisite business-minded ventures like 2000’s Mission: Impossible II and 2003’s forgettable but very profitable The Last Samurai.

Cruise hasn’t made a movie remotely like Collateral since then. In the past decade, he has tilted heavily to tent-poles with astronomical budgets, including four more Mission: Impossible films. Then again, Hollywood has also abandoned yang in order to focus solely on yin. And Tom Cruise and Hollywood are nothing if not symbiotic. You don’t get to your 35th year as a movie star without always adapting to the present climate.

Cruise has been a rare constant in Hollywood since the early ’80s. But neither Cruise nor Hollywood has stayed the same. There have been several reinventions for both American institutions along the way.

Time, for one, moved much slower in 1988. A lot could happen in six months. The Tom Cruise of Cocktail is not the Tom Cruise of Rain Man. When you toggle between those films, you get the rare opportunity to witness an iconic actor grow up in real time.

Tom Cruise in 1988 is like U2 in 1983. In the video for “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” filmed live at Red Rocks Amphitheater outside of Denver, Bono is still an awkward kid — he has a mullet, a sleeveless shirt, knee-high boots, and an abundance of spirited high kicks. He’s not really the stadium-rock Bono yet. But every so often you catch a glimmer in his eyes that says, I think I know how to own these people. I’m not there yet, but I’m on my way. Cruise similarly came into his own as a grown-up star in the transition from Cocktail and Rain Man. Though Bono didn’t completely lose the mullet for another four years, Cruise’s transformation was far more condensed.

If Cocktail truly is a failure — I don’t think it is, but Cruise does — it is first and foremost a failure of career planning. It’s a little like Bono briefly reverting to his Under a Blood Red Sky guise between The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby. Cocktail was a throwback to the early ’80s Tom Cruise of Losin’ It and Legend , before he got his act together and became the Tom Cruise, a movie star who transcends time, generations, and bodily harm . Cocktail feels out of place between The Color of Money and Rain Man in Cruise’s catalog, in the midst of his “apprenticeship” period, when he dutifully shared the spotlight with respected elders from the ’60s and ’70s like Paul Newman and Dustin Hoffman, on the way to becoming an elder himself. (This continued with Robert Duvall in Days of Thunder , Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men , and Gene Hackman in The Firm , culminating with Stanley Kubrick and Eyes Wide Shut. )

Standing next to distinguished gentlemen makes you look distinguished. In Cocktail , Cruise resembles a man in his mid-20s who still lives with roommates and sleeps on a mattress on the floor. In Rain Man , he’s that same guy after he’s settled down with a nice girl and an IKEA charge card. This shift from innocence to experience defines the crux of Cocktail and Rain Man. After Cocktail , a cinematic mullet if there ever was one, Cruise would never be so guileless again on screen.

Rain Man made Paul Thomas Anderson realize that he loves Tom Cruise more than most people.

“He’s funny too!” Anderson raved last December to Bill Simmons . “Cruise is funny . When you see Tom Cruise on screen, name me anyone else that can do that right now.”

Cruise’s portrayal of Charlie Babbitt — luxury car huckster, mocker of his disabled brother, impatient clapper when people aren’t moving fast enough — helped to inspire Frank T.J. Mackey, the role Anderson created for Cruise in 1999’s Magnolia. You don’t need to squint hard to see the parallels. Charlie and Frank are unlikable assholes nursing wounded hearts and troubled relationships with their fathers. They abuse people as a way of keeping the world at arm’s length, the ultimate form of self-abuse. And when they achieve catharsis, they aren’t redeemed — their souls have thawed, but they haven’t stopped being assholes.

They are also, like PTA says, very funny characters, mostly because they are excuses for Cruise to launch into prolonged mental breakdowns. Is there anything better than Tom Cruise huffing, puffing, gesticulating, becoming unglued, yelling , and finally losing his freaking mind?

For years, distinguished directors lined up to run Cruise through the wringer: Scorsese, Levinson, Stone, Pollack, De Palma, Crowe, and Kubrick all delighted in driving him absolutely wild. What fresh torture can we inflict on Tom Cruise this time? Put him in a wheelchair! Strip him of his lucrative sports-agent career! Send him on a metaphorical “journey into the night” that doubles as a rumination on the compromises inherent to any marriage! Now, step back and watch the glorious madness commence.

During the prelude to the 61st Academy Awards, Hoffman was the favorite to win Best Actor for Rain Man . He did just that. (The other nominees that year included Tom Hanks for Big and Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver , both of whom seem leagues better in retrospect.) At the time, Hoffman’s performance was widely admired as a landmark in the portrayal of a disabled person on film. But since then, Hoffman’s stock has plummeted and Cruise’s has skyrocketed. It’s now become a cliché to talk about how much better Cruise is than Hoffman in Rain Man , even though he supposedly has the less showy role.

This is only half true. Cruise is indeed superior to Hoffman’s mannered, dated performance as Raymond Babbitt, which now seems like a cartoonish caricature of a person with autism. But Cruise’s work in Rain Man can’t really be described as not showy. While Hoffman exists as a static irritant, Cruise is reactive to the extreme. He’s big and bombastic, and he dominates the film’s dramatic arc. He’s the one the audience relates with, the one who changes from the start of the story to the end — not much, but enough. It’s dazzling to witness. Rain Man is the greatest breakdown of Tom Cruise’s career.

If Cruise’s role was merely to support Hoffman’s campaign to win a second Oscar, he doesn’t act like it. He knew how good the role of Charlie was. He spent two years working on the script, starting back when he was promoting Top Gun in 1986. “What I gave him is the thing that he hasn’t often had the opportunity to do: work with a full character,” Levinson told Rolling Stone in 1989.

As Charlie, Cruise is a man constantly reminded of how he falls short, and there is no guarantee that he won’t carry on making the same mistakes after the credits roll. It is a complicated depiction of adulthood, whereas Flanagan’s magical turnaround in Cocktail — he marries Shue, agrees to be a father to his unborn child, and opens his own bar — is a child’s fairy tale.

If it’s been a while since you watched it, or you’ve never seen Rain Man , go do it now. My wife and I revisited it last week, and we barely noticed Hoffman. Meanwhile, we couldn’t stop laughing — or cringing — at Cruise. We hadn’t seen it since our two kids were born, and now it was impossible not to watch Rain Man as an allegory about the frustrations of parenthood. Charlie is not a parent; he’s merely tasked (by his own greed and resentment over essentially being cut out of his father’s will) with taking care of his brother. But his rage over, say, not being able to get his brother to board an airplane , in spite of deploying simple logic and facts , felt extremely familiar.

The central struggle of taking care of a person who can’t take care of themselves is over control. The dance between caregiver and care-receiver requires the giver to convince the receiver to acquiesce; this means the receiver is actually in the power position at all times, even when it appears that the opposite is so. No matter Rain Man ’s other deficiencies, particularly when judged according to modern sensibilities, the way the film depicts that dance still feels true.

Charlie Babbitt is Patient Zero for Cruise’s strongest subsequent performances, which all concern power in some way. Cruise plays men who want to command their surroundings, and can’t, thus causing all that imminently watchable turmoil. Ron Kovic can’t control his body. Cole Trickle can’t control his emotions behind the wheel. Lt. Daniel Kaffee can’t control his court case. Mitch McDeere can’t control his own life once it is infiltrated by the mob. Jerry Maguire can’t control Rod Tidwell. William Harford can’t control his wife’s sexual desires. Frank T.J. Mackey can’t control the TV reporter who is about to expose him.

And that need for control clearly resonates with Cruise in his real life. What could be the cause of his fixation on hard work? Could it be a desire to account for every possible outcome, to ensure that he never falls from his perch? Either way, all of that planning and plotting and persnickety obsessing has clearly paid off. If you can will yourself to run on a broken ankle, or carry on each time news breaks about the weirdness of your personal life, you can accomplish anything.

But nobody is perfect. For Cruise, Cocktail represented a loss of control — he couldn’t change the final product or prevent the short-term damage it caused to his reputation. But with Rain Man , he was able to channel his control-freak tendencies into a character who must accept that the arc of the universe is long but bends toward accepting that Wapner must be watched in five minutes.

By the end of 1988, Tom Cruise showed that he could sublimate himself on purpose . He turned powerlessness into a superpower.

Steven Hyden is the author of two books, including Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the End of Classic Rock , out now from Dey Street Books. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine , The Washington Post , Billboard , Pitchfork , Rolling Stone , Grantland , The A.V. Club , Slate , and Salon . He is currently the cultural critic at UPROXX and the host of the Celebration Rock podcast.

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Tom Cruise’s Worst Movie That Has 9% Rating Bloomed His Hollywood Career More Than Any Mission Impossible Movie Has Done So Far

Tom Cruise's 'Cocktail' (1988) is the worst-rated movie of his career, and yet it solidified the branding the actor enjoys today.

• Even before his 'Mission: Impossible' stint, Tom Cruise's worst-rated film proved his authentic stature in Hollywood.
• 'Cocktail' (1988) may hold a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but it demonstrated Cruise's work rate and immense box-office draw.
• In dedicating himself to the role wholeheartedly, the rising star offered a glimpse into the legacy he upholds today.

Controversial while he may be, Tom Cruise is  the  quintessential movie star. You can love him or hate him, but his on-screen charisma and willingness to go all in for all his roles is what makes him, even now, a considerable box-office draw.

He embodies cinema, and his dedication to pulling out all the stops in whatever he does—whether riding off a cliff on a bike or carrying out an impossible fight sequence on the top of a moving practically-constructed train—evidences his legacy and brand in Hollywood. 

But this trait of his isn’t one he cultivated recently. Even before the plethora of Mission: Impossible films showed us Cruise’s knack for committing to the unimaginable, there was one movie, right after Top Gun and The Color of Money , called Cocktail (1988), where the actor’s diligence and tenacity spoke volumes of his character.

While the endeavor was critically panned and even earned itself the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Picture, the now-61-year-old Hollywood icon’s image within the industry solidified further—and when word-of-mouth failed to back the film’s box office success, it was Cruise’s star-power that proved revolutionary.

“Not sure how I feel about this”: Tom Cruise’s Top Gun 3 Update Gets Mixed Reactions as Fans Believe Maverick Was the Perfect Ending to the Story

How the critically panned cocktail (1988) cemented tom cruise’s hollywood stature.

Seven years into his Hollywood career, after hits like Risky Business and Top Gun , audiences saw Tom Cruise —a rising star, then—embody the role of an ambitious bartender Brian Flanagan in Cocktail . The film takes from Heywood Gould’s book of the same name. Touchstone Pictures, Silver Screen Partners III, and Interscope Communications backed the endeavor. While the effort didn’t lack either talent or commercial support, it failed to resonate with reviewers.

And though some movies of the past, mistakenly judged in their nascence, get reappraisal, Cocktail  never quite did. It holds a 9% rating on  Rotten Tomatoes ‘ Tomatometer. The audience score, however, stands at a slightly favorable verdict of 58%. Later, even Cruise admitted that the Roger Donaldson-helmed initiative wasn’t his career’s crowning jewel (via Rolling Stone ). 

If that wasn’t enough, the film even snagged Cruise a Worst Actor nomination at the Golden Raspberry Awards.

But get this: with all that critics had to say about the film, it still mounted to a commercial triumph. Against a budget of $20 million, the film amassed $78 million at the domestic box office (via The Numbers ). Its total worldwide gross was estimated to be a whopping $171.5 million. If that isn’t impressive, what is?

Cocktail  did not have positive word-of-mouth to fall back on, but it had Tom Cruise, whose sheer magnetic draw attracted flocks to the theatres. Whether the film would’ve achieved so without the Rain Man alum is hard to determine.  

However, this isn’t all that seemingly contributed to Cruise’s stature in Hollywood post- Cocktail . Sure, his succeeding endeavors would prove the building blocks for the image he enjoys now. Regardless, the actor’s commitment to the 1988 picture illustrated to Hollywood that the then-young star was worth banking on.

The film glaringly asserted that depending on Cruise meant he would leave no stone unturned in seeing to fruition whatever was assigned to him—even when the effort in question could’ve been passed off as a money grab or one of the many credits in one’s filmography that act as filler spaces before the next best thing comes along.

But that just isn’t how Tom Cruise does things.

Hollywood Boss Hints Tom Cruise May be Why Top Gun 3 Will be Delayed

Tom cruise gave his all even to the worst-rated movie of his career.

If his efforts to go all-in weren’t blatant in  Top Gun —a film that first illustrated the power behind Cruise’s stardom— Cocktail , which didn’t rival the preceding film in any metric, was proof enough. Even for a pursuit that many actors could’ve brushed off as an endeavor that wouldn’t need honing of one particular skill, Cruise stood apart from the crowd and went to extreme lengths in giving tangibility to the character of Brian Flanagan.

In an old interview, the bona fide star revealed the homework that went into his portrayal of the character in  Cocktail . Talking to  CBC , Tom Cruise affirmed,  “When I started out, I interviewed about 35 bartenders.”  In learning their craft and seeking their assistance to nail the realism of the premise, the actor demonstrated having put his best foot forward for the endeavor, even when it meandered into his worst-rated film. 

This penchant for ‘doing’ rather than merely ‘showing’ proved that Tom Cruise will stop at nothing to ensure that a task is to the highest standards. Instead of relying on Cocktail as a buffer between other opportunities or an acting gig snagged purely from a profitable perspective, Cruise prioritized the practicality and the art that characterizes filmmaking.

And these traits are reflected in his legacy and branding even today!

In putting the same effort he would in the impossible stunt sequences that characterized much of his career later on, Cruise’s stint in the 1988 romantic comedy-drama may have sealed the deal on his authenticity. It proved the actor loves doing what he does—that he reveres the craft above all.

Tom Cruise’s Infamous HALO Jump With Henry Cavill in ‘Mission: Impossible – Fallout’ Involved 106 Jumps That Had His Co-stars Age Quicker Due to Stress

Therefore, Cocktail may have failed to impress the critics and audiences of the time, but it showcased Tom Cruise’s status of a box office draw against all odds, ultimately making him an actor Hollywood studios could invest in and rely upon.

Written by Debdipta Bhattacharya

Debdipta Bhattacharya is a content writer at FandomWire, where she has written more than 500 articles on various topics of interest. She possesses a sincere passion for popular culture, anime, film production, and the evolving world of YouTube and streaming culture which has allowed her to be a devoted and well-informed writer. Debdipta holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communication. She has honed her skills and expertise in content writing with over two years of experience and strives to learn and grow daily.

Copyright © 2024 FandomWire, LLC. All rights reserved.

7 best Tom Cruise 1990s movies, ranked

Screen Rant

New road house movie proves it’s time to remake tom cruise’s 36-year-old thriller with 9% on rotten tomatoes.

With the recent success of the 2024 Road House remake, a critically-panned Tom Cruise movie from 36 years ago could also benefit from a remake.

• Modern reinterpretation of classic '80s movies, like the Amazon Prime Road House remake, can be successful and pave the way for more updates.
• A Cocktail remake could improve on the original's flaws with strong lead, action, and romance, following the success of Road House.
• Including a Tom Cruise cameo in a Cocktail remake could honor the original's legacy and capitalize on nostalgia for the '80s film.

The success of the Amazon Prime Road House remake perfectly demonstrates that a modern take on an oft-forgotten Tom Cruise movie from 36 years ago could also benefit from a modern reinterpretation. While far from perfect, Road House 's reviews are good enough to validate the remake's existence, while also paving the way for other classic '80s movies to receive the update treatment. Additionally, the Road House 2 tease , suggests the entertainment industry isn't quite done with modernizing classic action thrillers, further highlighting the potential for other '80s movie remakes.

Many of Tom Cruise's best movies are from the 1980s, but one movie in particular is among one of his most poorly received movies to date. As such, its legacy could actually benefit from a remake, as it isn't uncommon for remakes of classic movies to be better than the original. Furthermore, as demonstrated by the recent success of Top Gun: Maverick , it's very possible that a modern remake of the late '80s critical disaster in Cruise's filmography could benefit from a modern retelling. As such, one Cruise movie from the '80s needs a remake after Road House 's success .

All 11 Fight Scenes In Road House 2024, Ranked

Road house 2024's success proves a remake of tom cruise's cocktail movie could work, cocktail's similar vibe and setting are already perfect for a remake..

Based on the Heywood Gould novel of the same name, Cocktail sees Cruise as a New York City business student who takes up bartending in Jamaica to make ends meet. Filled with beautiful scenery and a unique cast of characters, Cocktail is unfortunately marred by a confusing message, as the movie's emphasis on Cruise's Brian Flanagan making money overshadows the forced love subplot between himself and Elisabeth Shue's Jordan Mooney. As such, a remake of Cocktail could work well since it would be the perfect chance to restructure its themes .

Cocktail 's remake would need a strong lead, compelling action, and believable romance to improve its predecessor's failures.

With a similar laid-back vibe combined with the ridiculousness of most '80s thriller movies , a Cocktail remake for modern audiences could maintain its unique Jamaican location and underdog protagonist, while blending it with modern romantic storytelling devices. Jake Gyllenhaal's Road House remake worked because it demonstrated that it was capable of keeping the good elements from the past, such as its location and hard-as-nails protagonist, while updating them with modern martial arts sensibilities and romantic storytelling. Cocktail 's remake would need a strong lead, compelling action, and believable romance to improve its predecessor's failures.

Cocktail's Divisive Legacy Would Give A Remake A Bigger Advantage Than Road House 2024

Road house needed to remain as faithful to its original movie as possible..

Cocktail isn't as fondly remembered as Road House , so a remake could be good for its legacy , and while the 1989 Road House isn't a critical darling, it still has a dedicated following that admires it greatly despite its flaws. As such, the remake needed to remain somewhat faithful to it. Cocktail is not as beloved, so a competent remake might actually be better for a proposed remake. Aside from possible cameos by Cruise and Shue, virtually nothing from the original Cocktail would need to be in a remake, which is a stark difference from Road House .

Who Could Play Tom Cruise's Character In A Cocktail Remake?

Just as Jake Gyllenhaal has proven to be a worthy replacement for Patrick Swayze's original iconic Dalton , there are plenty of candidates who could fill Tom Cruise's shoes in a Cocktail reboot. In the 1988 movie, Cruise's Brian is typified by his youthful charisma and hot-headedness . While he is ultimately driven by his dream of having his own string of successful franchise bars, he is also impulsive and motivated by his passionate relationship with Elizabeth Shue's Jordan . Throughout the story, he looks up to the older Doug as a source of inspiration – despite problematic aspects to his personality.

Road House 2024 Ending Explained

Because of Brian's arc, the ideal replacement would be someone youthful enough to be believable as a man at the start of his professional journey with a track record of portraying difficult relationships with mentor figures. After his performance in Top Gun: Maverick , Miles Teller could be a great option , and would be a satisfying nod to Cocktail 's Cruise-centric origins. Another choice could be Spider-Man star Tom Holland , who has both shown himself capable of embodying a difficult mentor/mentee relationship with Tony Stark and also displayed his bartending skills in Uncharted . Both candidates could bring something unique and interesting to Brian.

Tom Cruise Could Still Appear In A Cocktail Remake

Unlike Road House , which was sadly limited by Patrick Swayze's untimely passing in 2009, a Cocktail remake could potentially feature a cameo from original star Tom Cruise. Given Cruise's age, it would not make sense for him to return and play Brian Flanagan again – unless the film took a completely different approach to the story. However, including Cruise in a brief cameo could be a great way for a Cocktail remake to honor the original's legacy while progressing the story forward.

By necessity, Road House almost entirely avoided explicit ties to the original film. Although Gyllenhaal and Swayze's characters share the same name, there is no room for other returnees like Sam Elliott's Wade Garrett . While this helps the film distinguish itself from its predecessor, it also means that it fails to fully capitalize on the potential of nostalgia. Cocktail may not have been as critically successful as Road House , but the movie's notoriety and contemporary box office success means that a Tom Cruise cameo can help a remake acknowledge its surprising impact.

Road House (2024)

Road House is a remake of the original 1989 film, which followed protagonist Dalton, a Ph.D. educated bouncer at the roughest bar in the south known as the Double Deuce. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as Dalton, with two major changes including Dalton being a retired UFC fighter and the bar locale being in the Florida Keys.

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Tom Cruise Questions Everything in Stanley Kubrick's Final Film

Stanley Kubrick's final film puts Tom Cruise's movie star persona against the ropes in surreal and disarming ways throughout a dreamlike NYC setting.

The Big Picture

• Cruise's role in Eyes Wide Shut challenges his action-hero image, portraying vulnerability and insecurity in a surreal and thought-provoking manner.
• The film delves into male ego, desire, and insecurity, emphasizing the struggle to reconcile reality with unattainable fantasies.
• Cruise's character faces a dark night of the soul, grapples with emotions of shame and guilt, ultimately seeking reconciliation and a quiet domestic life.

On July 16, 1999, Stanley Kubrick 's greatly anticipated final film, Eyes Wide Shut , was released. Kubrick passed away a few months before the movie came out, and it remains one of the auteur's most provocative, controversial, and astonishing contributions to the cinematic art form. The film stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman , at the time married in real life and playing a couple on-screen, as a doctor and his wife who admits she has considered having an affair. The revelation sends Cruise's Dr. Bill Harford into a tailspin through the dead of night in New York City as he wanders around looking for sexual gratification, and seeking a greater sense of control over his own life.

Eyes Wide Shut

A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing.

'Eyes Wide Shut' Was an Interesting Departure From Tom Cruise's Usual Roles

Cruise's 1999 was an interesting point in his career, as he also starred in Paul Thomas Anderson 's Magnolia , which released a few months later. In the years since, he has not appeared in many strictly dramatic roles , opting instead for primarily action oriented films. Two auteurist directors were able to center these challenging, three-hour long, adult dramas around his acting talent, and there are not many other examples of actors who have managed to pull that off in such a short span of time. Although the release year is admittedly somewhat arbitrary, since Eyes Wide Shut was in development for nearly six years and filmed for 400 days –– breaking the record for longest film shoot in history. It is eerie that Kubrick passed away so soon after completing the final edits on the film, considering how lengthy the production was.

Kubrick plays with Cruise's movie star persona in an interesting way, as the Cruise we know as the cocky hotshot in Top Gun or The Color of Money is nowhere to be found, neither is the heroic posture he delivered a few years earlier in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible , a role which has gone on to define his career as he returned to the franchise for the seventh installment in 2023 . Instead, Cruise is up against the ropes. He is lost, vulnerable, and desperate to heal his broken ego. Kubrick puts Cruise in a world where he is vastly in over his head . Even when Cruise is in over his head, he is typically able to craftily maneuver a fighter jet or a motorcycle to speed his way past any conflict, but in Eyes Wide Shut , there are no easy solutions to the problems he is facing.

Tom Cruise Must Face the Fragility of His Ego in 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Dr. Bill Harford seemingly has it all at the start of Eyes Wide Shut , but if you look closer it is not the case. Yes, he is attending an incredibly lavish Christmas party, he seems to have a happy family unit, and he is a successful doctor. However, he feels out of touch at this party, he is disconnected from his wife, and while he is rich, he is realizing there is a more elite class from which he is entirely shut out. Tragic events involving a young woman overdosing while with the party's host, portrayed by Sydney Pollack who previously directed Tom Cruise in The Firm, and the revelatory post-party conversation with his wife lead Cruise on a dark journey through the streets of New York. Each city block or ornate room is given an otherworldly glow thanks to the over-saturation of Christmas lights filling the frame.

The visual choices combined with the ambiguous and surreal tone place Cruise in very unfamiliar settings where he walks a liminal tightrope between dreaming and reality . The discoveries he makes are challenging, as events unfold in such a way that he ends up at a secretive party where a sexual ritual is performed, after an invitation from his friend played by Todd Field , actor-director who would go on to collaborate with Cate Blanchett in TÁR (Blanchett also happens to have a voice cameo appearance in Eyes Wide Shut). This ritual gone awry leads Cruise to some dangerous situations as the individuals involved go to great lengths to stop him from speaking about or acknowledging what had taken place in any shape or form, especially after he seems to uncover that a woman may have been murdered as a part of the ritual.

Whether the disturbing events that play out in the film are meant to be taken at face value, they prove two things to Cruise's character. Either he must accept that his fantasies are so outlandish and embrace his reality where life is a lot more... normal, or these things he aspires to be a part of are far outside what he is capable of handling . This is not only with regard to the sexual encounters he approaches, but also his idyllic perspective on what his marriage should be, or his desire to attain vast wealth and enter into an even higher status than that of a successful doctor. His ego was bruised by his wife's revelation early in the film, but the experiences he seeks out to repair it end up mangling it even further.

'Eyes Wide Shut' Subverts Expectations of a Leading Man

Considering his breakdown toward the end of the film when he realizes his wife knows about the events of the previous days, it is clear Cruise understands he is out of his depth and feels a wide range of emotions including shame, guilt, inadequacy, and fear regarding his future. Cruise's role grapples with one of the greatest fears the male ego can confront, the notion that not even his masculine bravado can control or uncover the thoughts the women in his life choose to keep from him. The insecurity seeps through his performance as it becomes clear how even in marriage there are still things people will keep from each other, and he has no power to challenge that. This is a rare form to see Cruise in , and he handles these outbursts just as well as he handles traversing rooftops at impossible speeds or clinging to the side of airplanes.

Ultimately, Cruise is put through this dark night of the soul and comes out of it in a place where he and his wife can maybe set aside the collision of ego, desire, and insecurity, and enjoy a quiet domestic life together. It is kind of a happy ending... but it's a distorted one , but Cruise allows the opportunity to relinquish all of his troubled experiences over the last few days by accepting the life he has and attempting to reconcile with Kidman in the final moments of the film.

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Kubrick disarms our understanding of what a typical leading man should be through his treatment of Bill Harford's character. Cruise is uncomfortable , weird, and stripped down –– both literally and metaphorically –– in Eyes Wide Shut . This type of role is a challenging one for any actor to play, but especially difficult in the hands of someone with such massive celebrity status that audiences have certain expectations attached to his involvement in a film. Maybe in 1999, it did not seem quite as bizarre (although most definitely still bizarre considering the subject matter dealt with), but in retrospect Eyes Wide Shut is something quite rare for such a towering movie star to tackle with the confidence and image-conscious attitude Cruise brings to the part.

Although the film remains one of his most challenging and controversial, it is also one of the best outings Cruise has given as an on-screen performer. Some actors may have an easier time riding a motorcycle off a cliff for a film than getting into the right head space to portray such a vulnerable person. As the Mission: Impossible series continues, and Cruise shows no signs of slowing down his life as an action-junkie, we can hope he might return one day to a film as surreal, complicated, and thoughtful as Eyes Wide Shut.

Eyes Wide Shut is available to rent or buy on Apple TV+

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