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(film still courtesy of Mrs. Skin)

“Tom usually plays good guys.” ~Mr. Cruise’s Hollywood agent

We commonly associate Tom Cruise with that of the hero. The white hat if you will. *Roles like Teddy in Rain Man, or his breakout performance as a galactic ship captain in Star Wars 5 have left an indelible mark on the collective subconscious of the American moviegoer’s psyche.

But once in awhile an actor needs to play against type- to stretch. To keep the audience on their toes, sometimes a tough guy like DeNiro has just got to play the dad in something. Or reverse it, like when legendary nice guy actor Jimmy Stewart took on the role of a lifetime as British Union of Fascists party leader Sir Oswald Mosley in a biopic based on a screed written by H.L. Mencken. Did Stewart’s career suffer from his tender portrayal of this man, reviled by history for his acolyte devotion to Hitler and Mussolini? Plenty. Was he a better actor for it? Absolutely.

Mr. Cruise is no different. He grew out his chin hair to play a womanizing cad in Magnolia. He dyed his hair gray to play a hit man in Collateral. He played the last Japanese samurai in the movie The Last Japanese Samurai (didn’t see that one, but I think The Pacific closed the book on whether or not samurai’s are evil).

By playing the anti-hero, Mr. Cruise turns his notorious charm on its head. Big time actors like him don’t get successful by accident, except for Brendan Frasier. They possess within them an intangible quality- an extra something. I don’t know what else to call it: the Vinny Chase factor; the ice cream sandwich smile-factor? I usually stick to calling it that extra something since people get confused otherwise.

Call it what you will, Mr. Cruise has it, and to remind us of how much of it he has he plays bad guys sometimes. Deal with it collective subconscious of American moviegoer’s psyche. It’s only pretend bad.

*sentence trademarked by Warner Press, to be republished in the forthcoming compendium “The Rotten Tomatoes Film Bible.”