Tom Cruise's worst films
Last updated: March 16, 2026
Tom Cruise is well-known for his hit movies like Top Gun and Mission: Impossible but he has also made many duds. Without a particular reason or order, here is a list of his four worst movies.
Cocktail
Yes, despite some truly iconic scenes, this movie makes our list. Brian Flanagan (Tom Cruise) is looking for a high end business job after having been discharged from the army. When that doesn’t work out he takes up a job as a bartender while attending business school. At the bar he meets Doug Coughlin who teaches Brian all the fancy bartending skills.
Together they decide they want to open their own bar chain together. But when Doug seduces Brian's girlfriend, the partnership is quickly dissolved. They meet again some years later, both with new relationships, but their underlying problems remain and resurface, affecting both their partners and themselves.
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back
An old commander of the Military Police, Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise), is now a wandering drifter. However he is helping the current commander with a case when she gets accused of espionage. This leads to Reacher speaking to her lawyer who tries to help but also reveals that Reacher may be the biological father of a teenage girl.
Later the lawyer gets killed by a mercenary called The Hunter. Reacher gets framed and gets detained in the same prison as the commander. Together they escape to clear their names but also protect the teenage girl, who may be Reacher's daughter, after finding out she might be in danger.
The Mummy
An ancient Egyptian princess killed her family after a son was born. He would take the right to rule from her so she got rid of them all. For her crime she was mummified alive and buried far away. However, in the present day, her tomb is found again by American soldiers in Iraq and she’s resurrected. She possesses one of them in a plane, trying to kill the others but Sergeant Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) kills his comrade first.
The plane crashes and Nick dies only to wake up again at the morgue. The mummy attacks again with a horde of zombies but is subdued by soldiers. Nick learns about a secret society tasked with dealing with supernatural enemies, and they think Nick may be the answer to stopping the mummy.
Mission Impossible 2
Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) of IMF, Impossible Mission Force, receives a message from a bio-genetics scientist who claims that his employer forced him to create a virus. His employer is a pharmaceutical company and wants to profit from making the cure.
The scientist is on his way to Ethan with the cure when the plane he is on gets ambushed by a rogue IMF agent, Sean Ambrose. Ethan must then work with Ambrose’s ex-girlfriend Nyah Nordoff-Hall to find Ambrose’s hiding place. They manage to track him down but in the attempt to get the virus samples to prevent Ambrose from spreading them, Nyah injects herself at a stalemate to hinder her ex-boyfriend’s plan.
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