“Taps” (1981)
The same year as his “Endless Love” cameo, Cruise got a much more substantial role, and the first of many, many uniforms, in “Taps,” a Harold Becker movie (“Sea of Love,” “Malice“) that’s stood the test of time quite well. It makes a great study of the randomness of nascent stardom too, as Cruise is actually the second or third lead to equally early-days Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn, with Giancarlo Esposito in support. The story is rather ploddingly told, but it’s a compelling tale of young men being taught militaristic ideals without having the wisdom to apply them properly, with tragic consequences. When their Academy is threatened with closure, and their Commanding Officer (George C Scott) hospital-bound after a shooting accident brings on a heart attack, the cadets, led by their newly-promoted Cadet Major (Hutton) decide to resist the authorities trying to shut them down, eventually taking up arms. Cruise’s character is the hothead, while Penn’s is the more thoughtful, but the film is really Hutton’s, and watching it, then crawling under a rock for 30 years, you’d be sure that he would be the one with the bigger career right now. But if Hutton is subtle, delivering a very mature portrayal of misplaced honor and thwarted loyalty, Cruise is impressive even if his character is more one-note. And he does get to go briefly berserk at the climax, reminding us of those performances of his later career in which bloodlust or outright insanity lurk just below the surface. It’s a “Lord of the Flies“-style allegory, so it’s not exactly believable, and it takes too long to get where it’s going, but in “Taps,” we get the first glimpse of the Cruise of the future. And it’s only his second film.
“The Outsiders” (1983)
If “Taps” gave Cruise a taste of what it would be like to be part of a generation of upcoming actors, he hit the motherload by getting cast in Francis Ford Coppola‘s “The Outsiders,” alongside Matt Dillon, C. Thomas Howell, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Diane Lane. Based on S.E. Hinton‘s novel of the same name, the film is certainly beautiful to look at, and wants to be epic in scope and sweep, but somehow the story doesn’t quite have the grand heft and thematic resonance it really needs. But does it really matter when the cast is this pretty? Again, Cruise takes a less central role than those actors he would soon and forever eclipse in terms of star power, but it is notable from his point of view, because here, despite some spitty, snarly play-acting, greasy hair and snaggly teeth, we discern for the first time Cruise’s heartthrob potential, even in amongst so many heartthrobs. They play a gang of underprivileged kids who are involved in a rivalry with a wealthier gang that spirals out of control when one of the richer kids is killed in a brawl, and as such this also marks a rare time that Cruise would play a true outcast, a reject (as opposed to a principled loner) — future roles may have given him a blue-collar background, but defining Cruise characters are almost always successful in adapting to, and ultimately winning within whatever social circle they aspire to. But while Cruise may be overshadowed in terms of screen time and performance this time out by the likes of Macchio and Howell, especially, according to Lowe, already back then, he was displaying the “traits that would make him famous. He’s zeroed in like a laser.” Lowe also recounts how even this early on, his agent and future production partner Paula Wagner was a hugely important figure in Cruise’s life. Retrospectively it’s tempting to ascribe a good deal of the efficient upward trajectory of his early career to her guiding intelligence — sheer luck and raw talent can’t wholly account for zero-to-hero in just five films, after all.
“Losin’ It” (1983)
But if with ‘Outsiders‘ and “Taps” Cruise might have been in danger of being pigeonholed into the “volatile friend” supporting role, his next two films would be in one of the defining genres of the era — the teen sex comedy — and would put paid to any such notions. “Risky Business” would of course be his breakout, before “Top Gun” three years later would rocket, or fighter jet him to superstardom, but prior to that came “Losin’ It,” the justly overlooked “one crazy night”-style story of a bunch of high school kids heading to Tijuana for an evening of debauchery. No prizes for guessing what the “it” is that these boys are hoping to lose. Really, in tracing the evolution of Cruise into the star we know today, “Losin It” is most notable for being the first time he really had the lead role, even if that doesn’t clearly emerge until a little later in the film. So of the three friends who go on the trip, Dave (Jackie Earle Haley — apparently born looking about 35) is the wildcard motormouth who can’t keep it in his pants, Spider (John Stockwell) is the goodlooking jock who gets into fights and tries to bribe policemen while Woody (Cruise) is the sweet, slightly nebbish friend who chickens out of losing his virginity to a prostitute and is instead deflowered in a much more romantic manner by the young housewife (Shelley Long) to whom they gave a lift to TJ for a quickie divorce. So it’s a romantic lead of sorts, inasmuch as this sort of film ever provided one of those, but it’s Haley’s wired, twitchy, OTT performance that steals what little there is to take here. A sort of interesting moment happens at the end when Long’s husband reappears, but it’s way too little too late in what is otherwise a tiresome palaver of a film, featuring a neat line in casual racism and a pretty revolting sexist streak that may have been par for the course at the time, but dates the film badly now. The real surprise here is that Curtis Hanson is the director. So it’s not only an early low point for Cruise, then.