'Edge of Tomorrow' Works Because Tom Cruise Is Playing a Coward

Tom Cruise has been one of the biggest movie stars in the world for four decades, but he’s somehow having a new renaissance in his career over the past decade. While Cruise’s string of hits in the 1990s emphasized his ambition to work with auteur filmmakers and give versatile performances, it seems like Cruise’s current work is only in service of the audience. Cruise continues to push himself to deliver outrageously entertaining maximalist spectacle, and the success of the last few Mission: Impossible films and Top Gun: Maverick indicate that audiences will follow him no matter where he goes. Interestingly, one of the more underrated films from this era is the sci-fi action flick Edge of Tomorrow, in which Cruise took a completely different type of challenge — he had to play a coward.