4. Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
Tomatometer: 89 percent

He earned positive reviews for his role in Rain Man, but to many scribes, the Tom Cruise of the late '80s was little more than the pretty face out in front of critically savaged hits like Cocktail -- likable under the right circumstances, but lacking real depth. He'd go on to reinforce their assumptions a year later with Days of Thunder, but with 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise shocked his naysayers by delivering the most harrowing performance to that point in his career, committing so deeply to his portrayal of paralyzed Vietnam vet Ron Kovic that, according to director Oliver Stone, he came close to injecting himself with a solution that would have incurred temporary paralysis. Not all critics loved Fourth of July, but those who found fault with the film generally took issue with Stone's direction -- Cruise's work received almost universal raves; Emanuel Levy, for instance, referred to it as "one of his most powerful dramatic performances," and the Variety staff called it "stunning."

3. The Color of Money (1986)
Tomatometer: 91 percent

A long-after-the-fact sequel to a classic movie, only loosely based on the source material, helmed by a director who admitted to taking the project in order to secure financing for the movie he really wanted to make? The Color of Money shouldn't have worked, but it did -- in fact, it netted a handful of Oscar nominations (and gave Paul Newman a long-overdue Best Actor trophy). Despite its high Tomatometer rating, The Color of Money sparked a fair bit of critical dissention on its release, receiving two thumbs down from Siskel and Ebert, and cries of "unnecessary sequel" from others. Okay, so it isn't The Hustler's equal -- but few films are, and Newman brought out the best in the young, irresistibly toothy Cruise. It is, in the words of Empire Magazine's Angie Errigo, "a joy to see two masters (Scorsese and Newman) at ease with their work, and one, Cruise, in the making."