Tom Cruise’s player? Even his fans don’t know this movie!

From Coppola to Scorsese through Spielberg, Kubrick, De Palme, Ridley Scott or even Michael Mann, he directed some of the greatest films. And we logically think we know his filmography inside out. But there may be a Tom Cruise piece that even his biggest fans have never heard of…

This very unknown Tom Cruise movie currently showing Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 is Team Spirit which was released in theaters in 1983. A drama in which he plays an American football player who dreams of escaping his horrible everyday life. A small industrial town in Pennsylvania.

When he stars in Team Spirit, Tom Cruise is not yet a star, a status he would soon achieve with Risky Business and especially Top Gun. But he is already a young actor on the rise: while he starred in what AlloCiné viewers considered the worst film of his career, he is particularly notable for his performance in Francis Ford Coppola’s Taps and the Outsiders.

L’Esprit d’Équipe, directed by the famous cinematographer Michael Chapman, who we owe in particular to the picture of Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, is a classic work of the 80s, quite pleasant but very distinctive, whose real interest is clearly to discover Hollywood. star in his debut.

In the film’s credits, we see Leah Thompson, known for her role as Lorraine McFly, Marty’s mother, in the Back to the Future saga. Keep in mind that many years after playing an American football player in Team Spirit, Tom Cruise will be playing…an American football agent in Jerry Maguire!

Tom Cruise is currently in cinemas for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1 (but what does Dead Reckoning mean anyway?), which sees him reuniting with his iconic Ethan Hunt character.

“Mission: Impossible – Deadly Counts Part 1” trailer: