Tom Cruiseis a very brave man. We've known this for a while — the running, the leaping, the diving, the flying. In the second half ofMission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning,the eighth andlikely last film in the franchise, he performs two dangerous, immensely tricky stunt sequences, one requiring him to spend many minutes underwater in a tank (he's said he ended up inhaling his own carbon dioxide), the other requiring him to crawl acrossthe wings of a flying biplane(that one, he said, caused him to faint, repeatedly). There he was, just a few weeks agoin London, standing mysteriously, commandingly aloneon top of a huge IMAX theater, like something out of a Victor Hugo novel. It's not likely he was inspecting pigeon cotes on the roof. If Cruise ever played astronautNeil Armstrong,he'd probably do his own moon walk. You'd have to be crazy, or uncommonly brave yourself, to regard Cruise as anything less than heroic. Imagine, for example, that you happen to be trapped on a jet on a downward trajectory into the Hudson River: Who would you rather take over in the cockpit,Sully'sTom Hanks orM:I'sTom Cruise? (Hanks can stay in the cabin and calm down the passengers, then maybe tell a few jokes and hand out towels once the plane is resting on the water.) And yet, seriously, how brave does Cruise reallyhaveto be — orshouldhe be — even in an action film? After all, he's an actor, a superstar and a celebrity, as well as an indefatigable promoter of whatever his latest project happens to be — he's the face of a major brand.Final Reckoningcost a reported $400 million, a price tag that presumably includes an army of advisers, designers, effects specialists, publicists and miscellaneous crew, all dedicated to making Cruise appear as dazzlingly, daringly intrepid as his scripted role, agent Ethan Hunt, requires. The movie is a 2-hour-29-minute fantasy. For all Cruise's physical exertions — even in his 60s, he sprints like a rabbit, his arms scissoring the air with an almost mechanical precision —M:Iconcludes on a preposterously grandiose note that elevates him from the merely heroic to the messianic. By the closing shot, he's not that far removed from the smiling alien at the end ofClose Encounters of the Third Kind. Dominique Charriau/WireImage How much would it have mattered, you wonder, if Cruise had said, "I'm not getting on that plane! My body is my temple — and a temple stays on the ground"? What if he made the film with nothing but special effects, stunt doubles, CGI — all the toys available in the modern studio? Would you enjoy the film less if Cruise had shot those high-flying moments against a green screen? Would it diminish the film-going experience if you couldn't say to yourself, "Oh gosh, what if Tom Cruise had died doing that?!" Because he didn't, is the thing. Instead he wound up on the roof of that IMAX theater in London. Movies, as you must already know from a lifetime watching them, are wonderfully seductive. You're driven through Hollywood's answer toa Potemkin village— like Catherine the Great on her fabled tour of fabricated Russian towns — and you gladly accept it all as "real." You swallow the fantasy. Or maybe the fantasy swallows you. You don't for a second believe thatCary Grant is actually hanging by his fingertips from Mount Rushmoreor beingchased by a crop dusterin 1959'sNorth by Northwest.Yet you do. Cruise, though, is very determined to remind us just how much physical commitment his action work requires. It's important to him that you see him not only as Ethan Hunt, a spy of tremendous courage, but as Tom Cruise, himself, an actor who relishes the spectacle of suffering through and ultimately triumphing over extraordinary challenges of endurance. You can speculate why this matters to him personally, but it clearly matters to him as a star — he's doing this for the audience. Cruise's willingness to raise the hair on our heads and on the back of our necks is part of our unstated contract with him, at least where theMission: Impossiblefranchise is concerned. Novelists are expected to go on tour and read from their latest books. Liza Minnelli, sitting down for an interview, will at some point be compelled to reminisce about Judy Garland. Tom Cruise dangles midair from a biplane. This iron-willed dedication to put himself in harm's way — and filling movie-theater seats with people who wouldn't — is one reason Cruise is sometimes credited as being the savior of Hollywood. Doing this, though, can undercut that $400 millionM:Iillusion. When Ethan is up in the air, buffeted by the wind, his cheeks rippling, you can't help but think: Those are TomCruise'scheeks that are being pulled like taffy, almost to the point of making his iconic movie-star features unrecognizable. This can be a problem: Don't youwantTom Cruise to look like Tom Cruise? Or, at any rate, like the Ethan Hunt he's been playing since 1996? (I do.) Cruise ends up, in effect, uncoupling himself from the role and the performance he's created. And that can uncouple you from the movie's illusion. Admittedly, there's a long history of actors who've done their own stunts, dating back to silent-film stars likeBuster KeatonandHarold Lloyd. Ina famous scene from 1923'sSafety Last!,Lloyd dangles from the hands of a clock face 12 stories up a Los Angeles tower. You don't see the safety net stretched below to prevent disaster, but that's indeed Lloyd doing his own dangling, even though his right hand is missing its thumb and forefinger (the result of an on-set accident in 1919). It's probably no surprise that, accordingly to Lloyd's granddaughter,Cruise is a fan. Dia Dipasupil/FilmMagic The PEOPLE Appis now available in the Apple App Store! Download it now for the most binge-worthy celeb content, exclusive video clips, astrology updates and more! But you could argue that it's a more significant achievement — isn't it? — to generate a visceral response using nothing but the imaginative tools of cinematic technology. In other words, to fake it. Charlie Chaplin, in 1936'sModern Times,pulls off a breathtaking scenein which he roller skateswith effortless balletic grace around a department store's toy section, unaware that the area is still under construction — there's no floor at the center of the room, and no guard rail to keep him from skating over the edge and plummeting down hundreds of feet. That the gaping hole is really just a matte painting — a special effect — doesn't lessen the suspense or the comedy. I'll take the Chaplin over the Lloyd. For that matter, I prefer Cruise's science-fiction projects —Minority Report(2002),War of the Worlds(2005),Edge of Tomorrow(2014) — to any of hisMission: Impossiblemovies. In those films, the only thing at stake is your emotional response to the entertainment unfolding on the screen. Cruise, an enormous star and an ambitious actor, is right at home in those films. He's of a piece with them, and never less than fascinating, even when he's grievously miscast in a horror costume drama like 1994'sInterview with the Vampire. Presumably he didn't actually bite anyone on the neck. There's more to life than defying death. Read the original article onPeople