Jack Reacher Meets Wolf Of Wall Street In R-Rated Thriller Flying Up Streaming Charts

Published Sep 23, 2026, 11:17 AM EDT

Ryan Northrup is a Senior Staff Writer on ScreenRant's Movie & TV News team, where he has authored nearly 5,000 articles, including features and reviews. A graduate of McMaster University, Ryan began his career in public relations before attending Vancouver Film School. There, he built lasting industry connections and optioned a feature film screenplay.

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Tom Cruise is now preparing for the upcoming release of Digger, a darkly comedic drama, but his career has long been defined by action. The action has taken various forms over the last few decades, with the Mission: Impossible franchise relying heavily on death-defying stunts, while the Jack Reacher movies feature more hard-hitting fist fights. One 2017 film sees Cruise mixing action with true crime and comedy, and it's now re-emerging as a win with audiences.

Nine years after its release, American Made is flying its way up the HBO Max streaming charts in the U.S. As of writing, the film ranks in fifth place, right next to another Cruise movie in sixth place in the form of The Last Samurai (2003). These two Cruise titles beat movies including Horton Hears a Who! (2008), The Craft (1996), Beetlejuice (1988), and The Cabin in the Woods (2011). The recent resurgence is likely due to the heavy press Cruise is doing ahead of Digger's October 2 release date.

Tom Cruise's American Made Is Finding New Life As A Streaming Hit

Directed by Doug Liman, American Made arrived the same year as the disastrous The Mummy reboot, and one year before Mission: Impossible – Fallout, which is widely considered one of the franchise's best entries. American Made features Cruise as American pilot Barry Seal, who takes on a job drug-running for the CIA in a secret operation that would eventually be revealed as the Iran-Contra Affair.

Also starring Domhnall Gleeson, Sarah Wright, Jesse Plemons, Caleb Landry Jones, and Lola Kirke, the film falls just behind movies like Miss Congeniality (2000), The Revenant (2015), and Fuze (2025) on HBO Max. After bombing in theaters, Supergirl (2026) occupies the top spot. This newfound streaming success for American Made follows a relatively disappointing box office run of $134 million worldwide.

The Film Is The Ultimate Mixture Of Jack Reacher & Wolf Of Wall Street

American Made arrived one year after the release of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, the second and least successful installment in the feature film arm of that franchise. Like Jack Reacher, American Made was hit with criticisms that Cruise was perhaps miscast in the lead role. Still, the 2017 movie earned generally positive reviews, and the mix of comedic elements and true-crime (and the R rating for language and some sexuality) evoke The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).

American Made seems unlikely to go down as one of the best movies of Cruise's acting career, but it does feature a predictably charismatic lead performance from the Mission: Impossible star. It remains to be seen how the film will fluctuate on HBO Max in the days and weeks ahead, but viewers are evidently enjoying revisiting this underseen action comedy.