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Tom Cruise’s Best Running Scenes in Movies, Ranked

Tom Cruise’s love for running is the subject of memes, video essays, and ESPN articles. Here are his best running scenes in movies, ranked.

It’s a running joke in Hollywood and one that is well-known among cinema audiences — Tom Cruise loves to run, and he does it exceptionally well. It’s one of those odd things that make it as a popular meme, but with zero exaggeration of the facts. His love of running has received commentary from ESPN and measured against box office success by Rotten Tomatoes . A YouTube video titled "Every Tom Cruise Run. Ever.," which compiles nearly 19 minutes of the actor’s running scenes across various movies, actually has 2 million views garnered across the past six years.

With his relentless pursuit of excellence and love for daring stunts, Cruise has become a rare brand in modern-day Hollywood, often being called the last movie star. He knows what the audience expects of him, and seeks to deliver it to great satisfaction in every movie. And his unique run is simply indispensable in every movie he’s in — his chest blown-out, straight-backed, straight-palmed run that seems to model itself perfectly around the kind of role he’s doing. Ranking his running scenes across different movies makes pure cinematic sense. So, here are 10 of Tom Cruise’s best running scenes, ranked.

10 Making an Arrest — Minority Report

Minority Report has built a reputation as one of the classic sci-fi movies of the early-2000s . But as far as Cruise’s brand as an on-screen sprinter goes, the movie is also the best possible exhibit of this strange Hollywood phenomenon. The movie features Cruise as a futuristic police officer on the run from his own team. The very plot of the movie gives it an above-average potential for running scenes, and the movie utilizes much of it. But the best scene featuring Cruise running is near the beginning, when he runs across a street to the first-floor bedroom of a house in record time to stop a murder. Despite many cuts, the scene perfectly captures the unique kinetic energy of Cruise’s run.

9 Dream Run — Vanilla Sky

It is one thing to simply have good running form, but Cruise’s run is firmly established as a meme given that he tends to run even in non-action drama movies. Vanilla Sky has garnered a cult following as a psychological thriller , and stars Cruise as a wealthy socialite. But the movie still manages to start out with a scene of him running — the scene is famous for taking place in a fully deserted Times Square, and is set as a dream sequence in the movie. The great thing about this scene is that it makes complete sense, establishing a state of disoriented paranoia for Cruise’s character.

8 Samurai Assault — The Last Samurai

The Last Samurai is a rare achievement for Hollywood as a western-made samurai movie that stays true to the feel and themes of the original Japanese samurai movies. Cruise takes the role of a disillusioned war veteran in the movie, observing the final days of the samurai tradition during the Meiji Restoration of 19th Century. The movie’s climax involves a last stand by a group of samurai warriors against the modernized Imperial army. Dressed in full samurai garb, Cruise doesn’t get quite the opportunity to display his signature run during the assault. However, it is a fitting high point for the movie as the samurai warriors run towards the Imperial soldiers with a rousing battle cry.

Related: Every Time Tom Cruise Played Someone Different From His Usual Roles

7 The First Attack — War of the Worlds

Cruise’s running scenes aren’t just noted for their exceptional form — as noted by ESPN , they’re also a testament to his professionalism and skills as an actor. He has consistently proven that he can do everything that an actor is required to do while running at lightning speeds, take after take. Not just that, but based on his role, his run is also a versatile tool of expression. In War of the Worlds , Cruise’s character finds himself in the middle of a sudden attack by powerful aliens on earth. It’s a greatly involving scene that finds Cruise running helter-skelter for his life through the city streets as people are getting vaporized left and right. Given the nature of the scene, his gait appears quite topsy-turvy — and fittingly so.

6 Twilight Rooftop Run — Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

You simply can’t have a big-budget spy action movie without a rooftop chase. One wonders how much Cruise and the Mission Impossible franchise have to do with this mandatory genre convention. The popular movie series has altogether too many rooftop chase scenes for a single franchise. But nobody can dispute that Mission Impossible does it quite well. A memorable scene in this category takes place during Rogue Nation , featuring Cruise and Rebecca Ferguson running across a picturesque backdrop dressed in full James Bond uniform. The romantic undertones of this scene are undeniable, and it’s a point of praise that the movie manages to pull it off during a running scene.

5 Running Through Shanghai — Mission: Impossible III

This particular sprint by Cruise stands out with its abject velocity. It is commonly known among Tom Cruise fans that he regularly has to slow down when running alongside other co-stars. This scene in Mission: Impossible III sees him run full-tilt across a crowded market corridor in Shanghai, and it captures the utter ferocity of Cruise’s run — one of its important qualities! It starts off with a gorgeous tracking shot that follows Ethan Hunt nimbly step down from a series of brick-tiled roofs and shoot through the corridor while screaming in a foreign language. It’s an underrated moment that perfectly displays Cruise’s dedication to the craft.

Related: Mission: Impossible: Tom Cruise's 5 Best Stunts in the Franchise, Ranked

4 Overhead Bridge Run — Collateral

Collateral is one of Cruise’s most unique and memorable performances. Directed by Michael Mann, Cruise stars in the movie as a cold, highly proficient assassin who lands in Los Angeles for a night to do a job. The movie was praised for its neo-noir tones, and Cruise’s performance played a part in its overall success, even earning him an MTV Movie Awards nomination for Best Villain. His signature running style, with the jutted-out chest and stiff palms, stands out as something anomalous to the movie’s urban context. But it adds a feeling of terrifying tenacity to the iconic character, a feeling of predatory determination that is best seen during the overhead bridge scene. As is the general rule, Cruise running doesn’t go to waste in this movie either, and subtly sets him apart as a fundamentally different sort of entity masquerading as a regular person.

3 Rooftop Chase — Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Mission Impossible: Fallout features perhaps the best rooftop chase scene in the entire franchise. Cruise famously broke his ankle while jumping across a building for this scene, and chose to finish the scene with the injury so that the shot would be complete. This rooftop chase features some of the best examples of the sweeping camera angles that are now common in blockbuster spy movies. Cruise starts the sprawling one-pan chase scene against the backdrop of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, giving viewers 360-degree views of gorgeous skylines as it progresses.

2 Vertical Skyscraper Run — Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

The Mission Impossible franchise was also the instrument for Cruise to pull off some of his most daring stunts. One of the iconic stunts from the entire franchise takes place at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai in Ghost Protocol , and follows Ethan Hunt on a daring attempt to infiltrate one of the hotel rooms from the outside of the skyscraper. The scene gave audiences the unforgettable visual of Cruise running sideways across the Burj Khalifa. The run takes place at the tail end of a long stunt scene that is already fraught with tension, as Hunt navigates the glass walls of the building with hi-tech Spider-Man-style gloves. It is an all-around excellent stunt sequence that is designed with an entire structure of escalating tensions within it.

1 Running Away from a Sandstorm — Ghost Protocol

This is the scene that encompasses everything Cruise stands for, as an action star. Also taking place in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol , the scene captures Cruise’s signature running gait in a stunning low-angle shot as he runs out of the entrance of a skyscraper while a massive sandstorm begins to consume the building. It is a truly epic shot — the slow pan out revealing the sprawling architecture of the Dubai International Financial Center, with Cruise gradually moving in for a close-up that perfectly synchronizes with the backward movement of the camera.

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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.

Viral Video Shows Tom Cruise Running In Every Mission: Impossible Film And We're Knackered Just Watching

If you don’t fancy going to the gym today then we’ve got the solution for you – exercise vicariously through this Tom Cruise video instead.

The seventh Mission: Impossible film (Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, to use its full title) is about to be released, and to mark the occasion, Paramount Pictures has released a supercut of Tom’s many, many running scenes from the franchise’s movies so far.

Clocking in at just under 10 minutes long, the video features impressive chase scenes including Tom sprinting up the side of a building, dodging helicopter missiles amid vehicle explosions and charging across an airfield before leaping onto the wing of a military plane.

The final seconds reveal a sneaky glimpse at Dead Reckoning Part One, providing proof – not that it was ever in doubt – that Tom’s stamina hasn’t diminished in the 27 years since the first Mission: Impossible.

Honestly, we’re knackered just watching it.

The supercut is all the more impressive given the fact adrenaline junkie Tom, who plays Ethan Hunt in the films, is famous for doing his own stunts.

And the Hollywood icon – who often serves as a producer on his own films as well as the lead star – usually makes sure the whole cast trains with him before cameras are rolling.

Prior to filming Tom Gun: Maverick, Tom set up a gruelling months-long programme for himself and co-stars Miles Teller, Glen Powell and Greg Tarzan Davis.

The relentless schedule included an underwater course and “all-encompassing aviation training”. On top of that, the cast had to learn to operate their own cameras and direct themselves while in the sky.

Thankfully, judging from a featurette on the training , Tom’s castmates seem to be grateful for his efforts.

The seventh film in the Mission: Impossible series, Dead Reckoning Part One arrives in cinemas on Friday 14 July, with a sequel set to follow in a year’s time.

The movie cost a whopping $290 million to make and sees Tom star alongside Captain America actress Hayley Atwell and Dune’s Rebecca Ferguson.

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.

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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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WORTH WATCHING

Official 'tom cruise running in mission: impossible since 1996' video.

by Alex Billington July 3, 2023 Source: YouTube

"To the man who runs the mission… Happy birthday, Tom Cruise." Paramount Pictures posted this (for his birthday on July 3rd) amusing supercut video featuring ALL of the scenes of Tom Cruise running from the Mission: Impossible movies edited together. As everyone already knows, the next major M:I action sequel titled Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One lands in theaters worldwide soon. Everyone also knows that aside from all of his own stunt work, Tom Cruise is also known for running in, well, almost every one of his movies in the last decade (and not just the M:I ones either). We can only assume he doesn't have a stunt double runner and is doing most of this running himself? From this video, it's clear that all of his running really picks up around Mission: Impossible III (2006) - the one directed by J.J. Abrams. There are a couple of iconic running scenes in that one, and from there on out over the next four movies they start packing in more and more of these scenes. This video runs a whopping 10 minutes in total - it's awesome.

You can rewatch the amazing teaser for M:I - Dead Reckoning Pt 1 here , and the main official trailer here .

In Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his IMF team embark on their most dangerous mission yet: To track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity before it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, and dark forces from Ethan's past closing in, a deadly race around the globe begins. 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. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One is again directed by American filmmaker Christopher McQuarrie , director of the movies The Way of the Gun , Jack Reacher , plus both Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation & Fallout previously. The screenplay is also by Christopher McQuarrie. Based on the television series created by Bruce Geller. Produced by Tom Cruise, J.J. Abrams, Christopher McQuarrie, David Ellison, & Jake Myers. Paramount Pictures will debut McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One in theaters worldwide starting on Wednesday, July 12th, 2023 this summer movie season. Part Two will land in theaters starting June 2024 . Rewatch the first teaser trailer .

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Why Tom Cruise Looks So Amazing Running

Tom Cruise’s MO: Running from explosions — with near-perfect form. (Photo: Mission: Impossible III/Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection)

It’s a known fact that Tom Cruise always looks amazing. But if you’re a fan of his movies, you also know that the actor looks especially amazing when he’s running . Which he has done in nearly every single film over his three-decade acting career.

And with the release of Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol coming up, we’re sure to see even more of Cruise’s exceptional running form. Case in point: At the 30-second mark of the Ghost Protocol trailer (below), Cruise is sprinting away from an explosion (shirtless, no less):

Want more proof? Check out one of the numerous online montages dedicated to the evolution of his on-screen sprints . Heck, Tom Cruise even looks good while running horizontally across a building :

(Image: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol/Paramount)

Tom Cruise doesn’t only look good while running, though. “He has amazingly good form,” says Alice Holland , doctor of physical therapy, running coach, and director of Stride Strong Physical Therapy in Oregon. By keeping his core tight and running with a quick foot turnover, he’s able to run very efficiently, Holland tells Yahoo Health.

“On film it looks as though he’s expending a lot of energy while running — and he may be, because he’s sprinting — but really it’s quite an efficient run because he’s staying very still,” Holland explains. Inefficient runners flail around more, Holland says — their arms flap out, and they have to expend energy to bring them back, or their heads bob up and down. With Cruise, she says, “There’s no waste of energy; everything goes into every single step.”

Let’s break down the secrets to Tom Cruising step by step, with the help of examples from Mr. Cruise’s best on-screen running moments.

1. Tight core

How fast is Tom Cruise? Fast enough to outrun a sandstorm, apparently . (Image: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol/Paramount)

The main characteristic of Cruise’s running form is that he keeps his core very tight. “You can see it because there’s not much movement in his pelvic area,” Holland says. “You can tell that his abdominals are contracted the whole time, and I bet if he had his shirt off you’d probably see his delicious abs popping out because he’s really contracting his core.”

Read This Next: 16 Thoughts You’ve Probably Had While Running

2. Powerful arm swing

Tom Cruise’s run is so iconic that it even became a joke in Courteney Cox’s sitcom Cougar Town. (Image: Cougar Town/ABC)

The way Cruise karate chops the air when he runs is actually a common sprinting technique, Holland explains. “He keeps his hands nice and tight like a slicer to cut the air, which is why you get that karate chop movement.” Four-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson , for example, also sprints with a karate chop-like arm swing.

In the Mission: Impossible movies especially, Cruise also keeps his elbows bent at about 90 degrees, and doesn’t let his arms cross the midline of his body. Those are both keys to a powerful arm swing, says Jennifer Harrison , a USAT Level 2 certified triathlon coach. “Many people cross their arms across their body, or don’t move their arms enough,” which is inefficient, Harrison tells Yahoo Health.

Finally, experts point out that Cruise’s arms swing quickly, which helps his feet move faster as well. “If you move your arms, your legs will follow,” Harrison adds.

Related: 5 Tips Sure to Help You Run Faster

3. Quick foot turnover

Yes, that’s a Bruce Springsteen T-shirt that Tom Cruise is wearing. (Image: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol/Paramount)

How fast you sprint is a combination of the length of your stride and how quickly your feet turn over, known as your cadence. Cruise runs with a short strike, but a very quick cadence, Holland says. “That makes any runner tense up their core a whole lot more, and it also causes the runner to not pop up and down so much,” she explains.

The opening to Vanilla Sky was one of the most expensive single shots in movie history. Times Square shut down for Tom Cruise to run through it alone. (Image: Vanilla Sky/Paramount Pictures)

When you watch Cruise run, his head doesn’t move up and down very much. Instead of wasting energy on moving vertically, he’s putting all of his energy into propelling himself forward. He’s able to do this because his cadence is high and his core is tight, Holland says.

Not only is this an efficient way of running, Holland says, “Camera and acting-wise this is great because the audience can watch his facial expressions and stay focused on his character, rather than seeing a blur on the television.”

4. Explosions

Even covered in full futuristic body armor, Tom Cruise still has good running form. (Image: Edge of Tomorrow/Warner Bros.)

Let’s face it, an explosion in the background makes anyone look cool while running.

Related: 26.2 Things Only Runners Understand

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

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."

When Tom Cruise Doesn’t Run, His Movies Don’t Either

Run, Tom, run!

The Big Picture

Tom Cruise's movies perform better at the box office when he incorporates running and dangerous stunts into his roles.
Cruise has a unique understanding of what audiences want from him as an entertainer, and he uses his running and stunts to cater to those preferences.
While running is a defining characteristic of Cruise's movies, it's unfortunate that his more complex acting roles are often overlooked in favor of his physical feats.

Few actors have the sheer star power of Tom Cruise . He has been making hit after hit at the box office, with franchises like Mission: Impossible and Top Gun where he defies common sense and does impossible things, like flying jets and performing incredible stunts, too. All that's for our entertainment, and he has no problem admitting that he's simply doing what the audience wants to see him doing. He's right, and we love him for all the crazy stunts he pulls to make us go to the movies — that's why he's our #1 Tom in Hollywood, for example .

But even though he's always jumping off cliffs and pulling every other kind of crazy stunt you can think of, what we really love to see Tom Cruise doing is running. It's become a staple of his work on Mission: Impossible , as well as what makes people get out of their homes to see him in the theater. Don't believe it? Well, Rotten Tomatoes did the math on this , and the results are baffling: the more Tom Cruise runs in a movie, the better it performs among the public and box office. As funny as it may sound, though, this sort of data says a lot about how we perceive Cruise as an artist and entertainer, as well as how he perceives us as his audience, so let's get into it.

The More Tom Cruise Runs, the Better His Movies Perform

Whenever he's about to drop a new movie, Tom Cruise always released some behind-the-scenes videos of him doing crazy stuff, like flying a plane without protection, a casual smile on his face as he says "See you at the movies!" We love to see him do this, even though it gets everyone a little worried for him, too. But that's just who he is nowadays, doing everything to provide us with something no one else is doing. And this is reflected in the results of every movie of his that's released after.

So much so, whenever there's no running, his movies don't really perform all that well. For example, according to the data provided by Rotten Tomatoes , the movies in which he runs less than 500 feet (like in classics such as A Few Good Men and Rain Man ) have an average box office of $113 million, along with 59.2% audience approval. Their study even poses a middle scenario where he runs around 1,000 feet (like in Vanilla Sky and Collateral ), with the average box office earnings jumping to $413 million, and audience approval to 66.7%. When he does run more than 1,000 feet (like in Minority Report or Mission: Impossible - Fallout ), though, the average box office profit rises to $471 million, with 76% approval.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, as he runs plenty in Jack Reacher and The Mummy , but those failed both at the box office and approval. Sure, "running" may as well be a euphemism for "pulling crazy stunts" — for example, he literally flies fighter jets in Top Gun: Maverick and relegates running to more of a "complementary" role, so to speak, and still made a lot of money at the box office and drove people back to the movie theater after years of the pandemic. Still, the message is pretty clear: we want Tom Cruise to run.

RELATED: Tom Cruise's Only Directing Credit Is From a Neo-Noir Series You've Probably Never Heard of

What Do These Numbers Say About Tom Cruise as an Entertainer?

Tom Cruise enjoys an almost godlike status in Hollywood, something that no other actor has. He has so much pull, studios often bow to him when it comes to release strategy and streaming. This sort of influence is not something that's built from one day to the next. Cruise has been around for nearly 40 years lining up hits on the big screen , and this longevity and experience grants him a singular outlook on the industry and his own career. This, combined with his talent and adaptability, are the secret to his status nowadays.

Recently, Cruise addressed the rumors about him ever being attached to the role of Iron Man in the MCU , and he provided us with some insight into his process. He says: “I look at a movie and think, [...] what’s the story? What’s the character? Does it interest me? Do I feel this is what an audience would like to see me in?” Although some people would've liked to see him as an Iron Man variant, his answer reveals that he doesn't just do movies because he feels like it, but that he's figured out what the audience in general usually wants from him, and that's, well, running and pulling insane stunts. There are some who may think that this isn't as glorified as doing, say, a character study, but there's a lot of merit in what he does.

All this shows his knack for the business side of Hollywood, that he can read his audience and what they want from him. As an entertainer, few stars have this sort of insight, and it reflects on the choice of movies he's been doing for a long time. The last movie he made that doesn't feature him running is 2017's American Made , and it isn't one of the audience's favorites (despite being very good). After that, Mission: Impossible - Fallout came out a year later with a big running sequence. 2022's Top Gun: Maverick had its issues with filming during the pandemic but has plenty of running and stunts, and, now, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 has him literally jumping off cliffs . He doesn't do all that just because he wants to, but because he knows we want him to.

What Do These Numbers Say About Us as an Audience?

It's definitely funny to think that we're tying up box office performance and audience approval to whether and how much an actor runs in a movie. By all accounts, it seems absurd, but it says a lot about how we approach movie-going nowadays. Big franchise movies have always been around, but they've become a dominant force with the advent of superhero movies in the late 2000s. This resulted in the average moviegoer needing some sort of identification with the movie in order to go see it — a brand, a character, an actor.

In Tom Cruise's case, his movies may be good, but what people are really paying to see is him. He is in no superhero movie, but the way he found to make a stand against this is by developing his own "superpower" of sorts. People are not interested in seeing his proper acting chops, as good as they are, but his superpower: running. It began with him doing his best to convey the sense of urgency his roles required, but, eventually, it grew into what we expect to see him do. Maverick , Fallout , and Dead Reckoning - Part 1 are all great movies, indeed, but a huge part of their marketing was letting people know that Cruise did something crazy while filming because that's what everyone wants and expects him to do.

As an entertainer and moviemaker, Cruise is smart enough to catch on to that. We love to see it, but it's also kind of sad because there are great movies with him in which he doesn't run , like Magnolia , Lions for Lambs , and Tropic Thunder . All of those show him doing something much more complex than piloting jets or jumping from rooftops, which is acting. It's a pity that he's not recognized, for example, for the role of chauvinist producer Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder , because that's not something we usually see him doing. For all he's done for movies in recent years, he has a lot more to offer than just running.

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Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – Fallout.

Top run: does Tom Cruise ban co-stars from sprinting alongside him on screen?

Is the gritted-jaw, arms-pumping greatest runner in film only impressive because he has a no-run rule for fellow actors?

T om Cruise is the big screen’s greatest runner. It doesn’t matter what films he makes any more; so long as there’s a scene where he grits his jaw and pumps his arms while he tears along at an improbable speed, people will buy tickets. This is why nobody seemed to be too cut up when Top Gun 2 was yanked from summer schedules. There isn’t enough space inside the cockpit of a cutting edge fighter jet to let him run around, so what’s the point in even watching it?

However there are now whispers about the secrets of Cruise’s screen running. Namely, it only looks so impressive because he bans everyone else from running on screen at the same time as him. Think about it. In Vanilla Sky he ran alone. In Minority Report he ran alone. In the Mission: Impossible films he runs alone. In War of the Worlds people tried to run with him, but the aliens vaporised them for their insubordination. In Collateral he chases after people a lot and always catches them because he is Tom Cruise, and therefore essentially two big pistons perched on top of a human torso.

We know about Cruise’s no-run rule because Annabelle Wallis, Cruise’s co-star in The Mummy, has claimed in an interview that she alone possessed the moral fortitude and skills of persuasion necessary to break him down.

Speaking to the Hollywood Reporter, Wallis said : “I got to run on screen with him, but he told me no at first. He said, ‘Nobody runs on screen [with me],’ and I said, ‘But I’m a really good runner. So, I would time my treadmill so that he’d walk in and see me run. And then he added all these running scenes.”

So that’s it. The answer isn’t that Cruise won’t run with anybody on screen because they might make him look bad. It’s that he can run at such an alarmingly speedy rate that most other mere mortal actors would simply look like puffy old globs of cholesterol next to him.

Either way, it’s good to know that lockdown has given us the opportunity to learn all the weird things that people in the film industry hate on their sets. Anne Hathaway claimed that Christopher Nolan hates chairs . Wallis claims that Cruise hates other runners. There’s no end to Covid in sight, so who knows what we’ll learn next. Does Martin Scorsese possess an irrational fear of moustaches? Could Daniel Day-Lewis be enraged to the point of apoplexy by geese? Does Vince Vaughn hate ham? At this stage it’s essentially a waiting game.

Annabelle Wallis, right, with Cruise in The Mummy.

But I’m afraid that I have to pour cold water on the Cruise no-run hypothesis. Because although Wallis ran with him on-screen in 2017, you only need to look back one year earlier to see a scene where Cruise runs with another person.

Remember Jack Reacher: Never Go Back? Remember that scene 28 minutes in? You know, the one scene in the entire movie where Jack doesn’t tell people how he’s going to beat them up right before beating them up, or peripheral characters explain in hugely unnecessary detail how good Jack is at everything? That’s right, it’s the scene where Cruise and his co-star Cobie Smulders inexplicably sprint for a taxi past the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool because they both want to go to an internet cafe.

So there. Unfortunately this is fake news. The truth is that Cruise does run with other people on camera. But he only does it in really bad films.

Action and adventure films
Minority Report
Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Mission: Impossible

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Tom Cruise Running Form Analysis

Jae Gruenke

Updated: December 20, 2021

Running Form Analysis

The actor Tom Cruise’s running form has been much discussed but little analyzed. That’s a shame because there’s so much to see.

If you’ve watched a couple of his movies you can probably close your eyes and picture him running. However if you’d like a little help, this video will do the trick:

The one Tom Cruise running form analysis I could find basically argues that he’s a great runner because he:

holds his core so still
keeps his arms tucked in, hands slicing the air instead of flailing
maintains a high cadence

About the high cadence there can be no doubt. His turnover is blistering, and that more than anything else is what makes any other actor running in the same frame with him look at least a little bit out of shape.

Cruise’s Core

If you look at the sprinting scene from Mission Impossible: the Ghost Protocol , however, you’ll see that the tight, still core is not what it appears. Watch Cruise’s belt buckle and you’ll see his pelvis turns quite a lot. It’s actually impossible to run as fast as he does (if at all) without moving your pelvis, and if it seems fishy to you that trying to do something that is actually impossible could be essential to good form, then you are an intelligent person. I’ve got loads more to say about that, and learning to recognize the signs of excessive core stability is a good place to start.

Two Kinds of Arm Swing

At the beginning of that scene his arms are as described–pumping front-to-back, hands open and slicing the air in a very pure version of sprinting technique. I gather he was coached in this form and seems to have increasingly adopted it through his career.

But as this scene continues and he turns corners, grabs things, decelerates and accelerates again, and generally responds to his environment, his arm technique breaks down. His elbows swing wide, his hands (still determinedly held open) arc to the middle of his chest instead of staying to either side.

After a few strides in a straight line his arms go back to sprinter-style, but in no action sequence does that last very long. The fact is, that kind of arm technique is only any good for running in a lane on a track. You cannot respond to your environment while doing it. And that’s why, though it looks heroic, it rings a little bit false in his movies. Nobody does it spontaneously when running for their life. It’s only done in sport, or when someone’s really drilled it into you that it’s the way you should be running.

For contrast, take a look at his running in War of the Worlds , where he keeps his hands naturally curled and allows his arms to swing on a natural diagonal pathway from the center of his chest out to the sides and back. That may have been before he really adopted his sprinter-style technique or it may have been an artistic choice for embodying a character who’s just a regular guy, not a highly trained… erm, whatever Cruise often plays in his action movies (betraying my ignorance, as I’m not really an action movie fan).

The Posture/Foot Connection

Coming back to his overall sprinting form, if we zoom the camera out it becomes clear that he’s running quite upright–as in this clip from Mission Impossible –and his feet are turned out and fall almost in a straight line, as if on a tightrope, as you can see here in Collateral .

While Cruise’s feet tend to turn out a bit in general, his gait only gets narrow like this and feet turn out more when he’s in sprinting mode. (In fact, if you go all the way back to this clip from Taps in 1981, he’s just jogging and his feet don’t appear to turn out at all.) At the same time, the forward lean you can clearly see when he starts running or deals with a complex situation vanishes when he’s in full-out sprinting mode and fully upright.

Notice in this clip from The Firm how Cruise leans forward, his head moves side to side, and his arms pump hard as he begins to run, and then once he’s reached a steady speed his arms start going more front-to-back and his head stops moving. When a runner’s weight stops shifting from side-to-side, the head is no longer shifting from one foot to the other, and instead the feet need to come closer to the midline for support.

(To clarify: it sounds sensible to say that any side-to-side movement is wasted movement in running. But the fact is we have two legs and each of them is on one side of the body, and we need to be supported by them in alternation. So some side-to-side movement is in fact optimal, and when you stop it from happening you have to work harder to run at any given speed. In sprinting, Usain Bolt was a master of this side-to-side movement, so it is definitely functional and fast.)

Meanwhile the front-to-back armswing activates the muscles on the back of the body excessively (they have to work to keep the hands from coming to the center of his chest) and this effort pushes the chest forward, bringing the runner upright or even, in the Mission Impossible clip above, slightly leaning backwards.

The Source of the Face

This also produces Cruise’s iconic running face: teeth showing between pursed but open lips, and eyes bulging. When a runner’s head is too far back it’s not effectively pushed forward by the feet, and even facial muscles get recruited to pull it forward and keep it from falling farther back. Whenever you see a runner grimace, their neck muscles pop out, or their jaw tense, this is what’s going on.

But it’s tough to draw the line in Cruise’s movies between his running form and his roles. Since his running scenes generally involve characters under intense duress, that facial expression (in all its variations) fits the story and the character’s whole-body movement.

What his Feet Show

Now regarding Cruise’s habit of turned-out feet, there are a few places in the compilation video where he slows to a jog and stops. At those moments you can see his turned-out feet in the air behind him (usually they’re too much of a blur to see clearly). When a runner does this, it’s a clear sign of overly-active lower back muscles. There are plenty of other indicators of high back muscle tonus, as I’ve mentioned above, and in this little clip on a sort of futuristic human hamster wheel you can see Cruise jogging slowly and get a sense of how active his lower back is.

This isn’t uncommon in runners of all levels. The one that comes to mind at the moment is Feyisa Lelisa, who won silver in the men’s marathon in the Rio Olympics. But it might be a sign of occasional low back tightness for Cruise, and it would probably be helpful to swap out some bracing-type abdominal work (such as planks) for more flexion. Improving range of motion and coordination of the hip joints, pelvis, and back for flexion and internal rotation helps a runner maintain a forward lean at speed.

If I were to give Cruise one lesson, it would be this one to help improve hip joint mobility in coordination with the pelvis in a way that reduces lower back tension.

How to Survive a Martian Invasion

The fact is, where you can best see Cruise’s excellence as a runner is not in his straight-line sprinting but when he’s ducking, dodging, and being knocked around by explosions. The number of times in the compilation video above that he nearly falls and catches himself is remarkable. Most people would have landed on their faces.

Cruise is not just a runner, he’s a skilled all-around athlete who does most of his own movie stunts. And this gets us to what good running form actually is and where it comes from. Not, as we’re taught to think, from drilling a set of correct movements until they become habit and can be performed with robotic consistency. But instead from having such a wide range of options, so much diverse skill at movement, that we can spontaneously and without conscious thought choose the best option for every single step. Because unless you’re running indoors on a treadmill, every step is going to be a little different. Maybe there’s a stone underfoot, maybe the road is a little cambered as you go around a bend, maybe the wind shifts, or maybe, if you’re Tom Cruise, a nearby car explodes.

Explosions aside, runners who cope with the endless variation they encounter in the environment are versatile, perhaps most when they appear to be moving consistently. Of course if there’s a Martian invasion going on, consistent running form will be impossible but the people who are most versatile in movement have the best chance of getting away.

The real pleasure in watching Tom Cruise run is watching that. His general good form (when he’s doing what comes naturally), his high cadence, and his speed are all outcomes of his ability to do things like run sideways on a building and slide on his hip across the hood of a car without breaking the fluidity of his gait before or afterwards.

If you want to emulate his form, don’t just copy how he runs–copy how varied his running is. Set yourself agility challenges and build your movement skill. It won’t just give you a better chance of surviving a Martian invasion, but also of enjoying your running and your life.

15 thoughts on “Tom Cruise Running Form Analysis”

As a nearly resolute non-runner and no great fan of action movies, nor Tom Cruise, I was surprised to be fully engaged by this. Great analysis Jae!

So glad you enjoyed it, Gillian!

Thank you Jae for giving me an excellent reason to study Tom ! I love that he does his own stunts ! Happy Holidays xx

You’re welcome, Heather. Happy holidays to you too!

I would like to challenge you with a critique on Australian Rob DeCastella, world-class runner from the 80’s. Definitely NOT prototypical mechanics we’ve come to expect producing such a successful and lengthy running career.

I’ve made a note, Scot. No promises, I’m afraid, as these things take me a long time. But I’ll see if there’s an opportunity for that to make sense to do.

Gawd! I’m going to be so much more of a pain-in-the-arch running-commentator whenever I’m watching films with him in now. Thanks, really enjoyed reading.

Lol! That’s great, Stuart.

Yes he is definitely an all around great athlete. I’ve heard he is a perfectionist so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a running coach of some sort. But your analysis of how he is able to adapt with optimal movement is interesting. I used to do agility drills a lot and now you got my wheels turning and maybe I need to switch things up a bit. Thanks for this!

Yes, pull those agility drills out of storage, Nneka. 🙂 Not to be confused with form drills, though. And even a bit of Ethiopian-style “forest training” as Michael Crawley describes in Out of Thin Air would be apropos. I didn’t think of it till after I wrote this analysis, but there’s a very interesting overlap between the snaking through the trees that the Ethiopian distance runners do and the labyrinthine runs we often see Cruise do in his movies. Beneficial in exactly the same way.

Loved this article! So interesting and fun to read. Always a pleasure to continually learn and ‘see’ more with you Jay. Thank you for all that you do. 🙂 Have a wonderful holidays!!

So glad you enjoyed it, Rebecca! Happy holidays to you too.

Thank you – an early Christmas present for my husband, who didn’t realise there was a compilation of Tom Cruise running on The YouTubes!

Yes, indeed, there’s this one and a number of others. He could go into a deep rabbit hole with this Christmas gift. 😉

Your article just leaves me thinking even more about what a great actor he is. In the movies where he does a very trained sprinting style, he’s playing an extraordinarily trained special agent, Jason Bourne style, so it makes sense he would also be trained in skillfully running top speed in a life-threatening situation. Wotw shows him how he would run if he were just a regular guy.