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1. A Few Good Men (1992)

Look, I know what you’re thinking. “A Few Good Men?!” Yes, I realize I’ve left The Firm, Interview with the Vampire, and Vanilla Sky, not to mention the other four of the top five movies on the table. As with other columns, I will not pretend that this is the objective best of the movies I’ve analyzed today.

But it is, by leaps and bounds, my own favorite Tom Cruise performance of all time.

He has never been more handsome, more straight-edged while being a bad boy, and more crushing of the bad guys as he was in this 1992 smash hit. Many kids watched Tom Cruise movies growing up, as I did, and many wanted to be like he was in a lot of those movies - an admired if troubled war hero, a cool, debonair cocktail bartender (in Cocktail), a daring air force pilot, a pool hall shark, or a misunderstood teenager who sang in his underwear with his air guitar - but not me. I wanted to be a nerdy lawyer who discovered the truth behind a mysterious murder by reasoning myself into the outcome and tricking the secretly evil but powerful figure into a confession on the stand a la Agatha Christie.

In A Few Good Men, Cruise plays the predictably disaffected and disinterested Lieutenant Kaffee, who is entrusted with the defense of two marines accused of the murder of one of their own. Kaffe cannot be bothered to make an effort for the men, and wants to coopt a plea so that he can keep his win-loss record intact. His cynicism makes him unlikable but likable at the same time, particularly as it yields to idealism, a driving desire to win, and more.

And who, of course, could forget one of the most memorable lines in the history of modern cinema: “You can’t handle the truth!” That line, of course, was delivered by Jack Nicholson, but it was in the rapid-fire banter between him and Cruise that it arose, after Cruise emphatically demanded from Nicholson’s Colonel, “I want answers!” “You want answers?!” “I want the truth!!” The classic line does not really work without the perfect setup, and Cruise provided it.

And I hold it dear because the movie played a non-insignificant part in driving yours truly into a career in law - although perhaps that is as much a reason to hate the movie than to love it, but in any case is a subject for another day.

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