Tom Cruise's range points to Digger as a career culmination

Earlier this summer the Top Gun films received a special re-release that included a theater-exclusive retrospective video, now released online, offering a first look at Tom Cruise's next role as Digger Rockwell in Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Digger. The new film has been described as a satire on billionaires and unchecked power, a biting social commentary that pairs comedy with large-scale storytelling.

Cruise's work in Born on the 4th of July remains a prime example of his range. Directed by Oliver Stone, the biographical anti-war film has him playing Ron Kovic across roughly 20 years, moving from disillusionment in Southeast Asia to protests and rallies back home; the emotional weight of that performance earned Cruise his first Oscar nomination in 1989.

He takes a different tack in Rain Man and Magnolia. In Barry Levinson's Rain Man, Cruise is deliberately understated as Charlie, serving as the audience's lens as his road trip with Raymond turns an exploitative, arrogant man into someone more empathetic.

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