All actors have their limits in terms of what they can pull off. Cruise is box office and that causes a situation where he is cast in roles which could arguably be better played by other actors. In fairness to Cruise, he is a more flexible actor than many action hero types and obviously is very committed to his profession.He does many of his own stunts.
Many objections to Cruise revolve around his physicality. He is a little fella. For a movie like Jack Reacher where the character is already established as a 6 feet 4 tough guy, then that is a problem by generally I thing criticism is a hangover from some of his earlier daft movies like Top Gun, Cocktail and Days of Thunder where he was essentially just girl bait. He is not Eastwood, Heston, Ford etc but these guys are a million years old or dead and they have not really been replaced by actors of a similar stature. Cruise is as good as we have these days.

A great actor gives a performance that suspends disbelief. I watched Jack Reacher, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, but none of that was really the fault of the lead actor. It was a very generic thriller, with a generic lead actor.

That said, Jack Reacher is a hell of a lot better than the dire Taken series of movies, which maybe only saved from being utterly s**t by Liam Neeson (well the first one, the other two are so s**t its almost unbelievable anyone rates them).

Matt Damon, doesn't strike me ever as being a death machine on legs, but he does pull it off in the Bourne series - Which is pretty much the same fair as Jack Reacher(round).

I think actors often get a bad press for the quality of films. Truth I think is, that director, writers and producers ruin most films, rather than the lead actor.

Tom Cruise is like medium cheddar, its ok, its not great, but its also not mild cheddar.

"One Nation Under God, has turned into One Nation Under the Influence of One Drug"
[Link]

Does anyone rate them?

What you have is a film like Taken which was greatly elevated by the lead actor and then many films these days where what could have been a good film is ruined by terrible box office driven casting.

There are some fine actors around but very few that have big star quality these days and the fact they they all seem very young as we age does not help I suppose. The other problem is that most main stream films are so dumbed down or effects driven that they are atrocious no matter who stars in them,

I'm struggling to think of any film he's been in where he doesn't play an irritating, highly punchable little turd.

Top Gun.

Buy Litecoin.

I'd have said that that was a prime example of when he did.

Edit. You beat me to it CF.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (18 Jul 2016 11.16pm)