The filmography of Tom Cruise, we logically think we know it by heart. But have you ever heard of “Team Spirit”, a work in which the actor plays an American football player?
From Coppola to Scorsese via Spielberg, Kubrick, De Palma, Ridley Scott or even Michael Mann, he has filmed for the greatest. And we logically think we know his filmography inside out. But there may be a Tom Cruise work that even his biggest fans have never heard of…
This very unknown film by Tom Cruise, currently showing in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, is Team Spirit, released in theaters in 1983. A drama in which he plays an American football player dreaming of escaping from his dreary daily life in a small industrial town in Pennsylvania.
When he stars in Team Spirit, Tom Cruise is not yet a star, a status he will obtain shortly after with Risky Business and especially Top Gun. But he is already a young actor who is rising: if at this time, he played in a film considered the worst of his career by the spectators of AlloCiné, he is especially spotted for his performances in Taps and the Outsiders by Francis Ford Coppola.
L’Esprit d’Équipe, directed by famous cinematographer Michael Chapman, to whom we owe in particular the photo of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, is a classic 80’s work, quite pleasant but very marked, whose real interest is clearly to discover the Hollywood star in his debut.
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In the credits of the film, we find in particular Lea Thompson, famous for having played Lorraine McFly, Marty’s mother in the saga Back to the future. Note that many years after playing a US football player in Team Spirit, Tom Cruise will play… an agent of a US football player in Jerry Maguire!
Tom Cruise is currently in theaters in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (but by the way, what does Dead Reckoning mean?), which sees him reunited with his iconic Ethan Hunt character.
The trailer of “Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1”: