Last night I went to see the new Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie, which incidentally was pretty good. However, given recent mixed reviews and the underperformance of Mission: Impossible III, I wondered just how this movie stacked up to Tom Cruise’s previous starring roles.

Utilizing Rotten Tomatoes scores I complied the following historical graph showing how much critics have liked or disliked movies starring Tom Cruise. Since the purpose of this exercise is to focus on Tom Cruise’s ability to carry a film, I am exempting movies from which he did not have a prominent starring role, like The Outsiders or Tropic Thunder.

Out of these 24 releases, ten have been deemed “fresh” while only seven are estimated as being “rotten.” Valkyrie received a rating of 57%, which is considered neither fresh nor rotten, but a middling grade. What might be more concerning is that none of Tom Cruise’s movies since 2004 has garnered more than 75% of support from critics. This could be construed, as it once was by Viacom’s Chaiman Sumner Redstone, to be an effect of a negative public image.

In terms of U.S. box office, the story is somewhat better. Of the 10 last releases, all but one, Eyes Wide Shut, have garnered more than $100 million in the U.S. box office, plus two movies, Mission: Impossible II and War of the Worlds, have passed the $200 million mark. As I mentioned before, Mission: Impossible III was considered to be somewhat of an underperformer, achieving $134 million at the U.S. box office, more than a third less than the previous installment in the franchise, and concerning given its $150 million production budget.

In Valkyrie’s case the box office has yet to close, but the film has already grossed around $63 million. Based on the two week performance of his previous seven movies, I “guesstimated” that Valkyrie will wind up grossing around $105 million in the United States. Unfortunately, this would rank his Valkyrie as an underperformer in Tom Cruise’s portfolio, making less than all of Tom Cruise’s releases since 2000, with the exception of Collateral and Vanilla Sky. Moreover, these earlier movies had production budgets that where about a third less than Valkyrie’s costs of $95 million, which further exacerbates the situation.

Where Valkyrie might find salvation is in the foreign box office. The last historical war drama made by Tom Cruise, The Last Samurai, grossed over three times as much in the foreign box office than in the U.S. On average his recent movies have only made 30% more. I therefore expect that there will be many foreign press junkets will be organized to secure as add as much foreign ticket sales to the pot as possible.

In any case, Tom Cruise will have to follow up Valkyrie with a stronger performing movie. It seems that his new project is actually a comedy called Men, where “an advertising executive surreptitiously becomes roommates with his wife’s lover–an egotistical artist–in order to sabotage their affair and save his marriage.” It sounds like $50 million personable romantic comedy, something he hasn’t done since Jerry Maguire. Perhaps it’s a good idea.