10 Greatest Ever Tom Cruise Running Scenes

He feels the need. The need for speed.

Mission Impossible Fallout

'Running in movies since 1981'.

Even Tom Cruise's social media bios are in on it. Now long past being an ongoing joke, running is now as much an expected part of the star's big-screen output as performing a death-defying stunt. Audiences have now been conditioned to expect at least one scene in each one of his movies where Cruise does his signature run, all upwards-pointing arms and bolt-upright posture, and some people get upset when it doesn't happen.

Basically, Tom Cruise is to 'running really fast, often for no reason' what Nicolas Cage is to 'losing his sh*t and acting crazy, often for no reason'.

As you would expect from somebody who has been gracing our screens for the last 37 years, Tom Cruise has done a lot of running on the big screen. In fact, recent news articles actually proved that his movies perform better at the the more he runs.

Now it has been proven as an indisputable fact of science that the Tom Cruise Run equals success, expect the action star to keep sprinting across multiplex screens for as long as humanly possible.

10. Mission: Impossible II

Mission Impossible Fallout

Mission: Impossible II may have marked the critical nadir for the franchise, but it was still the highest-grossing movie of 2000, racking up an impressive $546.4m. It remains one hell of a stylish movie, as you would expect from action maestro John Woo, but has dated badly and now serves as a time capsule of where the genre was around the turn of the millennium.

The movie features plenty of the action movie cliches that had taken over the genre post-Matrix and all of its director's well-known artistic flourishes, encapsulated in the fact that Tom Cruise ticks virtually all of the early-2000's boxes while running .

Slow motion? Sparks flying? Martial arts? Wire fu? Doves (well, pigeons in this case)? A leather jacket? Cruise does it all without breaking his stride, becoming a running advertisement for what action movies essentially were at the time in the process.

I don't do social media, so like or follow me in person but please maintain a safe distance or the authorities will be notified. Don't snap me though, I'll probably break. I was once labelled a misogynist on this very site in a twenty paragraph-long rant for daring to speak ill of the Twilight franchise. I stand by what I said, it's crap.

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Tom Cruise Pokes Fun at His Running in 'Mission: Impossible' Movies for Global Running Day

"Running in #MissionImpossible movies since 1996," Tom Cruise wrote on Twitter alongside a GIF of a scene from the next 'Mission: Impossible' film

JC Olivera/Getty Images

Tom Cruise knows a thing or two about running onscreen.

On Wednesday, Cruise, 60, took to Twitter to share a humorous post for Global Running Day . The actor used a GIF of a clip from his upcoming Mission: Impossible sequel showing him as he dashes across the screen in character as Ethan Hunt.

"Running in #MissionImpossible movies since 1996. #GlobalRunningDay," Cruise wrote in his Twitter post. The actor also shared the clip and caption, which points to 1996's original Mission: Impossible , on his Instagram Story .

Cruise also updated his profiles on both social media platforms to read: "Running in movies since 1981," in reference to the year he appeared in his first onscreen roles for the films Endless Love and Taps .

Cruise reprises his role as Hunt in the upcoming seventh Mission: Impossible movie, the franchise's first entry since 2018. In the film, Hunt and his team are tasked with tracking down "a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands," according to an official synopsis for the film. The synopsis additionally promises "a deadly race around the globe" throughout the movie.

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"Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than his mission – not even the lives of those he cares about most," the synopsis adds.

Cruise is joined by a large ensemble cast for the latest Mission: Impossible film, including  Ving Rhames , Esai Morales, Hayley Atwell ,  Simon Pegg ,  Rebecca Ferguson ,  Vanessa Kirby , Pom Klementieff, Mariela Garriga, Henry Czerny, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Frederick Schmidt,  Cary Elwes , Mark Gatiss, Indira Varma and Rob Delaney.

The movie is written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, a longtime collaborator of Cruise's who directed the previous two  Mission: Impossible  films and wrote  Top Gun: Maverick . McQuarrie, 54, is also making the upcoming sequel  Dead Reckoning Part Two , expected to release in 2024.

Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock

Global Running Day's website describes the initiative as "a worldwide celebration of running that encourages people of all ages and abilities to get moving."

"This day plays an important role, reminding us of the positives that running can offer to our physical and mental health and the power of unification," the non-profit's website reads of the event. Global Running Day itself is June 7, while the organization is holding virtual running events interested participants can join in through Sunday, June 11.

The organization also added notes to its website advising prospective runners to exercise caution in light of significant air pollution in New York City and much of the U.S.'s east coast due to smoke from Eastern Canada's raging wildfires.

Mission: Impossible   - Dead Reckoning Part One  is in theaters July 12.

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The 10-minute supercut of Tom Cruise running in Mission: Impossible movies is joy

Nearly 30 years of gunning it, all in one video

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Since the original Mission: Impossible hit theaters 27 years ago, Tom Cruise and a rotating squad of directors have continually redefined what the spy thriller saga is all about. Brian de Palma kicked things off in 1996 with a high-tension conspiracy throwback, then John Woo swung the franchise into slow-motion frenzy four years later. A decade later, Cruise found himself dangling off the Burj Khalifa — and he was prepared to one-up himself with each subsequent sequel. Going into Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 , the star made very clear that his penchant for death-defying practical stunts was not slowing down. Later this month, he’ll be motorcycling off a cliffside for our enjoyment.

But if you look back at the Mission: Impossible films, there’s a clear connection between them, a commonality that gives each movie core: running like all hell.

Ethan Hunt’s personal mythology has become more knotted over the years, and the things that go boom have gone boomier thanks to 30 years of advances in moviemaking technology, but the real thing Cruise brings to every picture is his two high-speed feet. The man loves to run — and run and run and run. Then he takes a break. Then he keeps running! Fans of the series have picked up on the actor’s devout belief in racing to a MacGuffin finish line on camera. Eating is to Brad Pitt as sprinting like there’s no tomorrow is to Tom Cruise. At this point, Cruise knows his reputation; his Instagram biography reads “Actor. Producer. Running in movies since 1981.”

The running in Mission: Impossible movies can go overlooked when squeezed under the tentpole sequences of each movie, but they are there, and when watched in succession in this mesmerizing supercut stitched together by Paramount Pictures’ crack team of archivists/editors, it becomes evident why the franchise has... legs. (Ahem.) No director shoots Tom Cruise running in exactly the same way, and the contextual circumstances of why Ethan Hunt has to run in a given moment demand a certain amount of nuance from a performer who is also going harder than any of us ever have at the gym. Set to the tune of Lalo Schifrin’s original M:I theme, the edit, debuting here on Polygon, is bliss for fans of this stuff.

See Tom Cruise run. Run, Tom. Run. Run run run!

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 hits theaters on July 12.

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Tom Cruise runs. But is he any good at it?

tom cruise funny running

IN 2018 , TOM CRUISE finally joined Instagram, and fans sure felt the need for speed: He picked up 550,000 followers in less than an hour. Now he's up to 6.5 million followers, and they're greeted by the actor's self-assessment of his own career in his bio. He could have gone with "Three-time Oscar nominee," or "Sold $10 billion worth of movie tickets."

But instead, he picked: "Actor, producer, running in movies since 1981."

It's a winking, self-aware nod to this much-memed chapter of his Hollywood career. He always gets the rogue bad guy with the rogue nuclear codes from the rogue country, and he does it in a sprint. By one running blog's count , he's run in 44 of his 52 movies, and that includes two running scenes in his newest movie, "Top Gun: Maverick," which opens this week nationwide. A quick reminder: Tom Cruise is 59 years old, the same age as Wilford Brimley when he was chasing Mitch McDeere in "The Firm."

But that raises the question... Is Tom Cruise actually a good runner? We convened an elite panel of Olympians, film critics and former coaches and set out on a mission to analyze Cruise's running -- and might have stumbled onto a never-before-told origin story of his first theatrical running moment.

The evolution

The official start of Tom Cruise, the running actor, was in 1981 when he ran in his first movie, "Endless Love."

But perhaps the most formative run of Tom Cruise's life came in 1980, during his senior year at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey. His old wrestling coach, Angelo Corbo, says Cruise -- then going by his legal name, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV -- was a decent 122-pounder.

But Cruise came in one day on crutches right before the 1980 wrestling postseason and said he'd slipped coming down the steps at his house. Since he was done with wrestling, Cruise wondered if it'd be OK to go out for his first play, "Guys and Dolls." Corbo said yes.

A few weeks later, though, Cruise came to Corbo and asked if he could come along to the state tournament to support his teammates. Corbo gladly welcomed him into the team van for the trip, and on the way to states in Princeton that March, they decided to get some lunch at a Mexican restaurant. His ankle had healed up enough to lose the crutches, so he walked in and sat down at the table with his teammates.

Almost immediately, Corbo says an assistant coach pointed at Cruise, then at a jar of hot peppers. "I'll bet you $5 you can't eat one of those peppers without drinking anything," the coach said.

Cruise quickly said yes -- "Tom always accepted any challenge, no matter what," Corbo says -- and chomped into it. Within seconds, everybody at the table thought smoke was going to start pouring out of his ears. Cruise leaped up and ran out of the restaurant with the rest of the team unable to keep up. "He ran real fast that day," Corbo says.

When they caught up to him, his teammates and coaches found him on the ground in the parking lot, face buried in a snowbank, stuffing snow into his mouth to cool it down.

"Well, he didn't technically drink anything in the restaurant," one kid said.

The assistant shrugged his shoulders and pulled a $5 bill out of his pocket. "Here, you win, Tom," he said.

With snow all over his mouth, Cruise gave a wide-eyed, toothy smile, similar to the one that would eventually sell somewhere around $10 billion worth of movie tickets. As Corbo describes the scene, he notes that Cruise had a look on his face of a satisfied performer who just captivated an audience for the first time. If there's a pre-Hollywood moment when Thomas Mapother turned into Tom Cruise, that might have been it.

That messy restaurant run sure sounds a lot like the version we see in Cruise's early movies. In "The Outsiders" and "Taps," Cruise runs quite a bit, and it's a sloppy, under-developed run. It's not until toward the end of "Risky Business" in 1983 when Cruise vaults up his high school's steps and jets through the hallways that the beginnings of a steady, faster form begins to emerge.

Caryl Smith Gilbert, a four-time NCAA champion coach who now leads the Georgia men's and women's programs, watched a reel of every Tom Cruise movie run and did a deep-dive analysis. She says she thinks Cruise steadily got better from 1981 until around the early 2000s, then had a breakthrough. Ever since, she says, you can see a clear desire to keep improving.

"It's right around the time he's in 'Collateral' that I could really see it," she says. "His technique got better, and I was like, 'Hmmm, he has to be getting real coaching.' And I also think you can tell that he must do this in his free time now. Like, he really is trying to get better."

Happy Birthday to @TomCruise , who wrestled at Glen Ridge (NJ) High School @NJSIAA shared that wrestling "helped him fit in after moving to the town from Kentucky. When an injury cut short his senior season, he tried out for the school musical. You know the rest ..." pic.twitter.com/goFrJYIwzn — NWHOF (@NWHOF) July 3, 2021

There is a common misconception that most great sprinters must be tall, and the success of Usain Bolt (6-foot-5) certainly has played a part in pouring concrete around that idea. But the truth is, most great male sprinters are in the 5-foot-6 to 6-foot-3 range, according to a study published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine.

And breaking news, Tom Cruise is, uh, not tall. He's often listed at 5-foot-7, but it's always felt like the way college football SIDs decide to round up all incoming freshmen by one inch and 20 pounds. Whatever his actual height, let's just say he won't exactly be playing Jack Reacher any time soon. (Checks IMDb, stands corrected.)

But Cruise's size shouldn't -- and doesn't -- matter much. "A lot of powerful runners are 5-foot-6 or below," says three-time Olympic gold medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee. "It's all about the turnover of your legs and generating velocity. I don't think his height is a disadvantage."

In "Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol," Cruise comes barreling out of a building as a massive sandstorm descends in the background. It's a long, striking visual because of the way Cruise's open hands slice through the air, over and over again, like he's in the middle of a round of Fruit Ninja.

It's one of the most glaring differences between his early film running and what he has done for the past 20 years or so. When Smith Gilbert says she thinks Cruise must have gotten some running coaching, she zeroes in on the major alteration to his hand movement -- he's gone from sporadically balled up, like many untrained amateurs, to remarkably straight in recent years. In many scenes from the past decade, Cruise's parallel flat palms are almost comical, as if a robot learned how to run from watching another robot.

That must be bad then, right? Not necessarily. People often associate running with balled-up fists, but quite a few great sprinters -- Carl Lewis, for example -- look an awful lot like Tom Cruise when they run, with their palms open. Many high-level runners say that the open versus closed hands debate is entirely a personal choice, that there's really no right answer.

In fact, coaches occasionally recommend that some runners consider a Tom Cruise-ish open-handed technique because, as strange as it might sound, great sprinters work hard to be as relaxed as possible. Smith Gilbert says clenching up hands can be the first sign that a runner is pressing, which affects the rhythm of their breath, which drains their speed and endurance.

"You can be open hand or close hand, as long as the shoulders are rather relaxed," she says. "The goal is good form and being as relaxed as possible. Tom Cruise knows what he's doing."

Cruise's technique can appear incredibly stiff at times, with his chest upright as though he's getting buckled into a roller coaster, flat palms churning, chin high with his face tensed up. Both Smith Gilbert and Joyner-Kersee independently flagged Cruise's running as being slightly too upright and recommended a little more forward lean. But only a little -- and neither was sure that that would be how he'd run without the cameras on.

"I bet that's something they make him do because it looks good on film," Joyner-Kersee says. "In real life, I could get his speed up by just angling him a little bit forward."

But they also both applauded Cruise's technical prowess, saying it's easy for a layperson to mistake stiffness for a good, consistent style.

"At the end of the day," Smith Gilbert says, "running is one foot in front of the other, as fast as possible. Running velocity is stride length times stride frequency. And he's pretty good in that regard."

Believe it or not, Tom Cruise might actually be fast. Like, really fast. A few years ago, a Quora user attempted to analyze Cruise's speed in several movies and estimated that Cruise hit about 15.3 mph at times, usually while wearing non-running shoes and full pants, no less. Cruise himself said he's been clocked at 17 mph.

Last year, marathoner Will Blase wrote a story for a running blog, The Harrier, in which he wanted to explore the idea that Cruise might be the fastest actor ever captured on screen. He pitted Cruise's "Mission: Impossible" runs against four other iconic movie sprints -- Tom Hanks from "Forrest Gump," Sylvester Stallone in "Rocky II," Harrison Ford running from a boulder in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and Marcus Henderson's terrifying nighttime sprint toward Daniel Kaluuya in "Get Out."

After poring over footage for days, Blase reached a verdict that surprised even him: Cruise edged out Henderson for the gold medal in his unofficial movie Olympics, with Hanks and Ford at third and fourth, respectively. Stallone finished last. "That dude is a robot," Blase says of Cruise. "It's incredible. He has it boiled down to science."

But would Cruise be better suited for sprints or slightly longer races? Smith Gilbert thinks Cruise would be great at the 800 meters or even the mile because she thinks he could sustain his top-end speed.

But Joyner-Kersee thinks Cruise could be a good 100-meter runner, and she says he looks like he might be in the 12-second range right now. "That's really fast for people who don't train to race," she says.

And what would happen if Cruise did train? Well, first of all, Cruise should know that he has an open invitation to come work with Joyner-Kersee and her husband, former U.S. track coach Bob Kersee. "I believe we could work with him, see what he's got," Joyner-Kersee says. "We could probably get him to 11.5 with ease."

For the record, 11.5 is very fast ... and definitely fast enough to catch up to Robert Duvall on pit row if they ever have a "Days of Thunder" rematch.

Mental toughness

In "Mission: Impossible Fallout," Cruise has a scene where he runs and leaps from one building to another. It's a long jump that the script called for him to not quite make, slamming into the side of the other building and pulling himself up.

Even with cables attached to his back, it was a brutally violent scene. On an early take, Cruise lands exactly where he is supposed to, a few feet short of making it onto the other roof. But Cruise's right foot bends at a gruesome angle -- he'd broken it on impact.

Yet Cruise claws his way onto the roof, climbs to his feet and limps past the camera with a broken ankle. That take is actually in the movie. Cruise took two weeks off but then returned to shooting, even though his ankle wasn't healed.

When he discussed it on "The Graham Norton Show" in 2018 alongside castmates Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Cavill and Simon Pegg, Cruise looks so proud when they roll bonus footage of the gruesome break. Pegg blurts out that he can't watch multiple times, and Norton tells Cruise he's nuts.

But Cruise took it as a challenge -- that word comes up over and over again when people talk about Tom Cruise.

"I knew I broke it instantly," Cruise says. "We have a release date, so we have to keep going."

Cruise has gotten only more aggressive about doing all of his own stunts, including the runs. He once told Men's Journal that he likes to spend as much time as possible training for his stunts -- and likes to oversee training for the rest of the cast, too. "If he wasn't an actor, he'd be a great stunt man," says legendary stunt coordinator Greg Powell, who worked with Cruise on the first "Mission: Impossible."

One aspect of Cruise's running that came up repeatedly with experts was the fact that so many of Cruise's runs are in suits or regular clothes. Sprinters are notoriously fickle about wardrobe, wanting as little as possible, Joyner-Kersee says. She specifically marveled at the amount of running Cruise does in "The Firm" where he has on a suit and a long coat and is carrying a briefcase, and he's soaked in sweat.

"I never even liked running if I got a few drops of rain on me," she says, shaking her head. "To do something over and over again like he does, that's good mental capability. He has the physical stamina, but to not get bored with it, doing it repeatedly and stay in character and still be able to produce what the scene requires. Even with breaks, it's impressive."

She laughs and looks back at a mural on her wall. It shows her running in her last Olympics. "I know toward the end of my career, I could always get up to 100% speed," she says. "But I could only do it once. I'm not sure how Tom Cruise is doing what he does."

Theatricality

There's not much debate about this fact: Cruise is the Meryl Streep of running, and it's virtually unfathomable to imagine anybody ever being able to put together both the body of work and the body to be running into their 60s.

And it's not just that he does a lot of running in movies; it's also that his running does a lot in his movies.

"His running always conveys something important in the movie," says Christy Lemire, a film critic at RogerEbert.com and cohost of the "Breakfast All Day" movie podcast. "He's running toward something and he is going to get there -- whether it's freedom or the truth or his wife is in danger. It's not just running as a crucial part of an action set piece. It is a physical manifestation of his ethos."

When author and film critic Amy Nicholson set out to write her book, "Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor," she felt compelled to dedicate an entire page just to Cruise's running. As she worked her way through all of his movie runs, she picked out a few that stick with her.

For instance, she likes Cruise's transformational running in "Knight and Day," the oft-forgotten rom-com thriller with Cruise and Cameron Diaz. In that movie, Cruise is a covert operative pretending to be a schlub. So some of his runs are a little clunky ... until he needs to be Ethan Hunt-like again later in the movie. "Some of his characters are better runners than others," she says. "Watch that movie, because it's an example of him having a goofy run. He allowed himself to be sloppy."

She also thinks his range of runs in "War of the Worlds" is a key entry in the Tom Cruise running library. Before the movie began shooting, director Steven Spielberg and Cruise huddled about what kind of hero Cruise would be. Spielberg told Cruise that alien invasion movies always feature people who are standing up and fighting.

But he wanted to do something different -- he envisioned Cruise's Ray Ferrier as a scared dad, running away and running to survive, not to defeat the evil aliens. And the style of Ray's actual runs needed to convey that, that he was terrified and just trying to survive the world for once, not save it single-handedly.

"He is charged in that movie to do nothing but run in fear and convince other people to run in fear with him -- even when his own children want to stand up and fight back," Nicholson says.

Lemire is a runner herself and says she can't imagine having to combine the amount of physicality with whatever mood Cruise is trying to portray for audiences.

"He has to do so much with his eyes and his face and his gait," she says. "He's never going for a leisurely jog along the beach and enjoying the scenery. He's trying to convey to us whatever his character is going through in that moment. And we underestimate that skill, that ability to make running a physical and emotional experience."

So ... is Tom Cruise good at running?

When he was Glen Ridge's wrestling coach, Corbo would have his group of 20 or so wrestlers do a circuit around the high school. They'd run past the cafeteria, up the stairs to the second floor, all the way to the end of the school, down the stairs to the first floor, then all the way back to the cafeteria. "The loop," he calls it.

Cruise often got roughed up in the room by more experienced wrestlers -- by Corbo's count, Cruise was 7-12 as a varsity starter. But when it was time to do the loop, he would morph into that kid who couldn't back down from a challenge. He'd run the loop hard, getting competitive with some of the same teammates who'd squash him every day on the mat.

One time, Cruise had been hurtling through the hallways and sheepishly approached Corbo at the end of the run. He wanted his coach to come look at one of the big metal doors in the stairwell.

Corbo went with him and found that the small rectangular sliver of glass in one of the doors was cracked. Cruise had been trying to outsprint a teammate and plowed through the door so hard that he broke it. Corbo said thanks for telling him, and when he was asked later by a school administrator whether he had any idea how one of the thick glass windows had a long crack in it, Corbo covered for Cruise.

"I have no idea," he said. "Those are pretty hard to break."

So Corbo's answer to the billion-dollar question of Tom Cruise's running prowess is yes, he's a good runner.

And the running experts agree.

"I've been to the Olympics," Joyner-Kersee says. "And he has pulled me in: Tom Cruise is good at running."

Before Smith Gilbert will answer that question on a recent Zoom call, she tilts her chin up to the sky.

"I think he is good at running -- for Hollywood," she finally says. "By that, I mean, I think that is him actually running in the scenes. But if he came out to race us at Georgia, we would demolish him."

She drops her chin down and stares right into the camera then, and says, "But I bet he would love to challenge me on that."

Tom Cruise pokes fun at his running style with animated GIF from upcoming Mission: Impossible movie

Tom Cruise pokes fun at his running style with animated GIF from upcoming Mission: Impossible movie

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LOS ANGELES – Actor Tom Cruise has a signature running style, which has been seen in many of his movies, and he is happy to poke fun at it.

To celebrate Global Running Day on Wednesday, the movie star shared an animated GIF of him running in the upcoming seventh Mission: Impossible movie.

In the Twitter clip, he is seen sprinting, his arms pumping furiously, as he zipped down a red carpet lined with candles. Within nine hours, his post had been viewed 2.3 million times.

He also shared the clip on Instagram Stories.

“Running in Mission: Impossible movies since 1996,” he wrote in the caption, referring to the first movie in which he appeared as covert agent Ethan Hunt.

The wildly successful movie franchise, in which Cruise is known to do some daredevil stunts, is set to end with the seventh and eighth films. The final two films make up Dead Reckoning, with Part One out in July and Part Two in June 2024.

The film’s director M. Raihan Halim (centre) and cast (from left) Shaheizy Sam, Sharifah Amani, Nadiya Nisaa and Hisyam Hamid at the press conference to promote La Luna.

Sharifah Amani champions the vulnerable in La Luna role

Related stories, american actor jared leto scales the empire state building to promote thirty seconds to mars world tour, actor-singer eric chou to headline taiwanese remake of k-drama itaewon class, robert de niro's company found liable for gender discrimination.

He also tagged on in his Twitter and Instagram bios that he has been “running in movies since 1981”.

The 60-year-old actor made his first movie appearances in Taps and Endless Love in 1981, before finding fame in 1983’s Risky Business and 1986’s Top Gun.

Running in #MissionImpossible movies since 1996. #GlobalRunningDay pic.twitter.com/woQKYQ20ia — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) June 7, 2023

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TODAY

Tom Cruise marks National Running Day with funny 'Mission' post

Posted: June 8, 2023 | Last updated: October 17, 2023

Tom Cruise celebrated National Running Day with a joke poking fun at his legendary speed in “Mission Impossible” movies.

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  • Cast & crew
  • User reviews

American Made

Tom Cruise, Sarah Wright, and Alejandro Edda in American Made (2017)

The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair.

  • Gary Spinelli
  • Domhnall Gleeson
  • Sarah Wright
  • 378 User reviews
  • 293 Critic reviews
  • 65 Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • 3 nominations

'American Made' Trailer With Director's Commentary

  • Monty 'Schafer'

Sarah Wright

  • Sheriff Downing

Caleb Landry Jones

  • Judy Downing

Jayma Mays

  • Dana Sibota

Alejandro Edda

  • Jorge Ochoa

Benito Martinez

  • James Rangel

E. Roger Mitchell

  • Agent Craig McCall

Jed Rees

  • Louis Finkle

Fredy Yate

  • Carlos Lehder
  • (as Fredy Yate Escobar)

Mauricio Mejía

  • Pablo Escobar

Robert Farrior

  • Oliver North

Morgan Hinkleman

  • Manuel Noriega
  • Adolfo Calero
  • All cast & crew
  • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

The Legion of Hope

Did you know

  • Trivia Tom Cruise is a qualified pilot. He did all of his own flying scenes during filming.
  • Goofs Barry Seal did not quit his job at TWA. In July of 1972 he was fired for taking fraudulent medical leave in order to participate in an explosives smuggling operation.

Barry Seal : I'm the gringo who always delivers.

  • Crazy credits At the very end of the credits, tucked among the copyright disclaimers is the sentence, "And yes, we know that's not El Salvador." This is a reference to a joke in the film about mistaking El Salvador for Nicaragua on the map. In fact, the country on the map was neither El Salvador nor Nicaragua, it was Honduras.
  • Connections Featured in Half in the Bag: The Mummy (2017)
  • Soundtracks A Fifth of Beethoven Written & Performed by Walter Murphy Courtesy of BMG Rights Management

User reviews 378

  • Dec 5, 2017
  • How long is American Made? Powered by Alexa
  • What are the rumours surrounding Barry Seal and how much truth is there in them?
  • September 29, 2017 (United States)
  • United States
  • Ball Ground, Georgia, USA (Mena, Arkansas)
  • Cross Creek Pictures
  • Imagine Entertainment
  • Quadrant Pictures
  • See more company credits at IMDbPro
  • $50,000,000 (estimated)
  • $51,342,000
  • $16,776,390
  • Oct 1, 2017
  • $134,866,593

Technical specs

  • Runtime 1 hour 55 minutes
  • Dolby Digital
  • Dolby Surround 7.1
  • Dolby Atmos

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VIDEO

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  6. 🤔 Do I Sound Like Tom Cruise? #short

COMMENTS

  1. Tom Cruise Running Montage (Run! GO GO GO GO GO!!)

    A compilation of the gratuitous amount of scenes with Tom Cruise sprinting, yelling, dashing and all out running for his life. Show more Show more Movie Minority Report

  2. Tom Cruise marks National Running Day with funny 'Mission' post

    Tom Cruise celebrated National Running Day with a joke poking fun at his legendary speed in "Mission Impossible" movies.» Subscribe to TODAY Food: https://bi...

  3. The Best Tom Cruise Running Moments

    782 Share Save 92K views 5 years ago As he sprints into action once more with Mission: Impossible - Fallout, we're looking back at the best moments from Tom Cruise's career, in which he has run...

  4. Tom Cruise Running

    Meme Status Submission Year 1981 Origin Unknown Tags tom cruise, running, mission impossible, minority report, scientology About Tom Cruise Running is a running gag of actor Tom Cruise. It consist of a numerous images, videos, and gifs of Tom Cruise running as he is notable for running excessively in his films. Origin

  5. 10 Greatest Ever Tom Cruise Running Scenes

    Even Tom Cruise's social media bios are in on it. Now long past being an ongoing joke, running is now as much an expected part of the star's big-screen output as performing a death-defying stunt.

  6. Tom Cruise Pokes Fun at Running in Mission: Impossible

    Published on June 7, 2023 02:52PM EDT Photo: JC Olivera/Getty Images Tom Cruise knows a thing or two about running onscreen. On Wednesday, Cruise, 60, took to Twitter to share a humorous...

  7. Tom Cruise marks National Running Day with funny 'Mission' post

    Tom Cruise marks National Running Day with funny 'Mission' post Tom Cruise celebrated National Running Day with a joke poking fun at his legendary speed in "Mission Impossible"...

  8. Tom Cruise Runs For 10 Minutes Straight In Decades-Spanning Mission

    A new Mission: Impossible video compiles every scene of Tom Cruise running in the franchise in celebration of the actor's birthday. Loosely inspired by the 1960s TV show, the first Mission: Impossible movie was released in 1996, introducing Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt. The actor is now gearing up for the release of the seventh installment, which features his most jaw-dropping stunts and ...

  9. Tom Cruise Mocks His Running Scenes in 'Mission: Impossible ...

    On Wednesday, actor Tom Cruise (60) posted a funny tweet for Global Running Day. He used a GIF from his upcoming Mission: Impossible sequel featuring himself as Ethan Hunt, running across the screen.

  10. Tom Cruise running in Mission: Impossible gets a definitive supercut

    The 10-minute supercut of Tom Cruise running in Mission: Impossible movies is joy. Nearly 30 years of gunning it, all in one video. By Matt Patches @misterpatches Jul 3, 2023, 9:01am EDT

  11. Tom-cruise-running GIFs

    Explore and share the best Tom-cruise-running GIFs and most popular animated GIFs here on GIPHY. Find Funny GIFs, Cute GIFs, Reaction GIFs and more.

  12. Tom Cruise Runs Backwards For 30 Seconds

    0:00 / 0:36 Tom Cruise Runs Backwards For 30 Seconds Saints 16 subscribers Subscribe 125 Share 26K views 6 years ago We cannot stop laughing at this hilarious compilation of Tom Cruise...

  13. Tom Cruise Running GIFs

    Tom Cruise Running Memes See all Memes Stickers See all Stickers GIFs Click here to upload to Tenor Upload your own GIFs With Tenor, maker of GIF Keyboard, add popular Tom Cruise Running animated GIFs to your conversations. Share the best GIFs now >>>

  14. Every Tom Cruise Run. Ever.

    Every Tom Cruise Run. Ever.Not speed walking. Not jogging. RUNNING.New videos every month!http://burgerfiction.comhttp://twitter.com/burgerfiction0:00 Introd...

  15. Tom Cruise runs. But is he any good at it?

    Tom Cruise runs. But is he any good at it? - ESPN > ESPN Olympic Sports Home Medal Tracker Summer Sports Winter Sports Olympics.com Paris 2024 "Top Gun: Maverick" hits theaters this weekend....

  16. Ethan Hunt's Best Running Scenes in the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE ...

    "Tom Cruise runs a lot on screen" is such an old joke that he's in on it, too. His Twitter bio says, "Running in movies since 1981." It's not just a clever bit. He really does ...

  17. Tom Cruise pokes fun at his running style with animated GIF from

    Jun 08, 2023 08:06 am LOS ANGELES - Actor Tom Cruise has a signature running style, which has been seen in many of his movies, and he is happy to poke fun at it. To celebrate Global Running...

  18. TOM CRUISE RUNNING IN MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE SINCE 1996

    To the man who runs the mission... Happy birthday, Tom Cruise. #missionimpossible Watch Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One on Digital TODAY: http:...

  19. Tom Cruise marks National Running Day with funny 'Mission' post

    Tom Cruise celebrated National Running Day with a joke poking fun at his legendary speed in "Mission Impossible" movies. More for You What we learned from a shocking week of Covid testimony

  20. Does Tom Cruise run funny?

    Tom Cruise doesn't age. Yeah, there's a scene in every one of his movies where he's sprinting like a mad man. And yes, his run is pretty hilarious. It's like he's high-stepping. It's probably ...

  21. American Made (2017)

    34 Videos 99+ Photos Action Comedy Crime The story of Barry Seal, an American pilot who became a drug-runner for the CIA in the 1980s in a clandestine operation that would be exposed as the Iran-Contra Affair. Director Doug Liman Writer Gary Spinelli Stars Tom Cruise Domhnall Gleeson Sarah Wright See production info at IMDbPro Watch on FXNOW

  22. Tom cruise running#memes#funny#shorts#youtubeshorts#tomcruise

    About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise ...

  23. All 7 'Mission: Impossible' Movies, Ranked

    Christopher McQuarrie. Cast. Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson. Rating. PG-13. Runtime. 147 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. From Brian De Palma's 1996 original to ...