Every Tom Hardy Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Edward Thomas Hardy, known to moviegoers as Tom Hardy, got his acting start in the early 2000s, but it took him a good decade to establish himself — as late as 2010, after he had landed a career-defining "Mad Max" role, Mel Gibson admitted "I don't even know who that is." 

Undoubtedly, the original Mad Max knows now. Hardy has risen from character-actor supporting roles to become an in demand leading man, headlining not only "Mad Max" but now the "Venom" franchise as well; there has even been recent talk that he could take over the iconic "James Bond" role. Seemingly cut from the same cloth as a Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis, Hardy consistently demonstrates a knack for reinventing himself with every role, as well as enough brains to work with iconic directors like George Miller, Christopher Nolan and Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu.

Though his career has been primarily focused on film, Hardy has also had a couple of noteworthy television roles. One of his first was a small part on the HBO mini-series "Band of Brothers." Also among his credits have been "Meadowlands," "Oliver Twist," and "The Take," but perhaps the 2017 television project "Taboo" was his most impressive achievement, since he served as not only the star, but also executive producer and co-creator of the series. 

Nevertheless, when you're looking to get your Tom Hardy fix these days, you typically head to your local cinema. With that in mind, here is a worst-to-best ranking of 
every movie Tom Hardy has ever made, as ranked by their critic scores on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Hollywood Reporter began their review of this McG dud with the subhead: "A month and a half into the new year and already a candidate for the worst of 2012," adding: "the whole picture should have been sent back for a reshoot." So if you haven't seen this Hardy film, consider yourself fortunate.

A strange outlier in the Tom Hardy film canon, his lowest rated major release was a romantic comedy, which isn't exactly where most people would like to see Hollywood's most intense A-lister spending his time. Sure, there were action elements — Hardy plays Tuck, a CIA agent caught in a love triangle with Reese Witherspoon and another CIA agent played by Chris Pine — but it was hardly worth overlooking all the painful moments where Pine and Hardy were romancing Witherspoon between moments of gunplay. 

Co-starring Chelsea Handler, Angela Bassett, Abigail Spencer, and Til Schweiger, the film did not do well at the box office — but thankfully, it also seems to have taught Hardy early on that although he's a lot of things, he's no Richard Gere, and should leave the romantic tripe to others. The film did manage to pull in over $150 million worldwide, but all these years later, admitting you bought one of those tickets feels akin to confessing that you bought stock in Pets.com.

Not many people saw "Child 44," and it wasn't simply because they were afraid they'd missed the previous 43 films. This drama cast Hardy as the commander of a Red Army unit, giving him a chance to unveil an impressive Russian accent — even if the flick didn't have much else to bring to the table. 

Based on the same-titled novel (which was in turn based loosely on a Russian serial killer), the film is set in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule in the early 1950s. Hardy's idealistic member of Stalin's military police lands himself in hot water politically while investigating a series of child murders. Gary Oldman, Vincent Cassel, Noomi Rapace, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Jason Clarke, and Paddy Considine fill out the rest of an impressive cast. Irregardless, the film opened to a small release, barely making back a fifth of its budget.

"The movie hints at a riveting story," wrote James Berardinell of ReelViews, "but is incapable of delivering it."

Arguably Hardy's most beloved film, one of the many amazing things about "Venom" is how it polarized audiences and critics. The battle continues years later, as it is the actor's next lowest-rated project. 

Hardy starred in, executive produced, and gave one of the most off-the-wall performances in modern mainstream film with this smash hit, telling a solo tale about the longtime Spider-Man-adjacent symbiote anti-hero.

Hardy plays something of a dual-role as both the human Eddie Brock and the voice of the symbiote Venom that attaches itself to Brock. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics had a strong negative reaction to the film, but audiences enjoyed it far more. Some critics derided it as not worthy of Tom Hardy's talents, such as Kristen Lopez of Citizen Dame, who wrote "A waste of a perfectly good Tom Hardy," and Josh Wilding of Cultured Vultures, who said "Venom can't be saved by Tom Hardy's unique performance and there's so much here that doesn't work."

Retaining aspects of the popular symbiote character while making him more of a compassionate protagonist, "Venom" had serious staying power at the box office. The franchise seems to only be growing, as 2021's "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" was one of the few legitimate pandemic-era blockbusters to open that year, and an Eddie/Venom post credits scene in "Spider-Man: No Way Home" may have opened Hardy's crazed take on the character into an entirely new universe.

One of the earliest roles in Hardy's career was as the villain Praetor Shinzon in "Star Trek: Nemesis." As part of the long-running "Star Trek" franchise, "Nemesis" was the fourth and final film made with the cast of "The Next Generation" television series. The lowest rated of all four, "Nemesis" is not particularly well-remembered, but lingers as an intriguing possibility for Hardy fans who want to see a side of him (including his bare head) they'll likely never see again.

The story of "Nemesis" concerns the Enterprise crew visiting Romulus to assist in negotiating a peace treaty, but the meeting turns out to be a trap. Shinzon was a clone of Picard who was raised on a slave planet, and now he needs Picard for the sake of his own survival. Rumors persist about the possibility of Paramount attempting to bring Hardy into the new "Star Trek" canon to reprise Shinzon in the next "Star Trek" film slated for release in 2023; if the A-lister agrees to do it, you can set our phasers to stunned.

When you realize how many bad movies Tom Hardy signed on to in the first decade of his career, it's kind of amazing he ever did hit the big time. This Paul McGuigan-directed dramatic dud was set during the 14^th Century, at a time of plague and war. After breaking his vows, a fugitive priest (Paul Bettany) holes up with a troupe of traveling actors. When the troupe passes through a town where a young deaf and mute girl has been sentenced to death for a murder she didn't commit, they craft a play based around the event, leading to the uncovering of the real killer.

General audiences enjoyed "The Reckoning" a bit more than critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but both parties found it rotten overall. "The Reckoning" is set during the 

Bolstered by a cast that included Willem Dafoe, Brian Cox and Vincent Cassel, Gina McKee, "The Reckoning" never went anywhere worth watching. Stella Papamichael of the BBC said that "Although raising intriguing questions about the moral obligation dramatists have to throw a spotlight on taboo subjects, The Reckoning offers simplistic solutions."

Pairing with infamous "Fantastic Four" writer/director Josh Trank for this trippy, meditative, heavily-makeupped take on Al Capone's dementia-ridden final days, Hardy gave an impressive effort, even if the film wasn't playing on the same level.

Taking place after the mobster's criminal activity has come to an end, "Capone" takes a quieter look at the man's life after his 10-year stint in prison, as the walls begin closing in around him and his past proves to be a haunting companion.

"Tom Hardy might be the closest thing we have to a Marlon Brando right now — not just in the sense that Hardy is a Method actor who loves makeup and costumes (and sometimes masks), and has a theatrical, at times outright hambone streak, but also in that Hardy, like Brando, seems to operate according to his own internal logic whether it matches what's around him or not," wrote Matt Zoller Seitz in his RogerEbert.com review. "His deliberate artificiality also links him to an older generation of stage-trained movie stars who retained a touch of sawdust-and-footlights bigness, like Orson Welles, who shared Hardy's fondness for prosthetic makeup and bizarre voices that sounded dubbed even if they weren't."

Empire Magazine added that "Hardy's swing-for-the-fences performance is a must-see," while others were less kind to Hardy's choices in the role, such as Fox4 Kansas City's Shawn Edwards, who said that "Tom Hardy is a terrific actor. However, Capone is easily the worst performance of his career."

A British drama/comedy, if you've never heard of "Scenes of a Sexual Nature," that's probably for the best. This modestly-budgeted film follows seven different couples who all meet in London's Hampstead Heath park. Each has their own romantic troubles to navigate in the scattershot plot. 

The ensemble cast around Hardy includes Ewan McGregor, Sophie Okonedo, Andrew Lincoln and Mark Strong, but has little else going for it. The few Rotten Tomatoes critics who covered the film were either left wanting or mildly enjoyed certain plotlines without being blown away. 

"McGregor's fey appeal makes his turn memorable, and Hardy's chancer is a very funny stand-out," wrote Empire Magazine in its review. " But the problem is the glib, half-baked situations — you're left wondering what the point of it all is — and sadly, that undermines all the best efforts of the cast."

Perhaps best remembered as the movie about Marie Antoinette that doesn't have her meeting the fate (by guillotine) that has maintained her notoriety as a historic figure, this film marked Sofia Coppola's eagerly-anticipated follow-up to "Lost in Translation." But it does contain a shopping scene scored by Bow Wow Wow.

The flick received a decidedly mixed reaction from both critics and audiences and wound up landing on the rotten end of the spectrum as opposed to the fresh by a narrow margin on Rotten Tomatoes. With a story that has been approached numerous times throughout cinema, "Marie Antoinette" attempted to put a fresh, stylish spin on the story of the real-life Queen of France of the late 1700s. Kirsten Dunst stars in the titular role, while Jason Schwartzman, Rip Torn, Molly Shannon, Asia Argento, Steve Coogan, and Judy Davis make up the main supporting cast. Tom Hardy plays the smaller role of Raumont, but makes an impression with just a couple of scenes.

"Antoinette" earned an Academy Award in the Best Achievement in Costume Design category, as well as nominations for three BAFTAs for costumes, hair & makeup, and production design. The strong technical elements didn't translate to a strong overall film for critics, however, with the Radio Times saying: "The film is ravishing to look at, thanks to the production team's unprecedented access to Versailles, but its frothy charm eventually wears thin."

Critics and audiences alike both enjoyed "Venom: Let There Be Carnage" more than the first "Venom" film, though the movie still landed a bad rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Tom Hardy reprises his roles as Eddie Brock, while Woody Harrelson's Cletus Kasady character — who appeared briefly at the conclusion of the first "Venom" — steps up to become the main villain of the sequel, now infected with the symbiote Carnage. 

A change up to the tone of "Let There Be Carnage," making it a more deliberately funny film than its predecessor, was noted as an improvement by many critics. Numerous outlets also cited the direction of this sequel as another improvement, with Andy Serkis filling the director's chair previously occupied by Rueben Fleischer on the first film. The Observer still came down hard on "Let There be Carnage" with a two-out-of-five score, but noted an improvement over the first film. "Serkis dispenses with detailed explanations and instead amps up the humor, leaning into the goofy, flirtatious dynamic between Venom and Brock."

Tom Hardy's first film so far on this list to receive a fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes is the 2008 crime comedy "RocknRolla." A Guy Ritchie flick in the vein of his earlier gangster comedies "Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch," it stars Gerard Butler as the suave One Two, who gets in the middle of a quarrel between the London underworld and the Russian mob involving millions of dollars in land and real estate acquisitions.

Hardy plays Handsome Bob as part of the star-studded cast that also includes the likes of Indris Elba, Mark Strong, Thandiwe Newton, Tom Wilkinson, Jeremy Piven, Toby Kebbell, Ludacris, and Karel Roden. "RocknRolla" was something of a return to form for Ritchie after having two poorly-received films in a row ("Swept Away" and "Revolver"). Some critics noted that "RocknRolla" felt a little too familiar to Ritchie's first two films, like The List, which wrote: "It's all perfectly serviceable, but still leaves us guessing over whether Ritchie is just a one-trick pony," and Paul Byrnes with The Sydney Morning Herald, who said "RocknRolla feels as if Ritchie is imitating his favorite director here, and that director is Guy Ritchie."

"Legend" might have ended up with a rotten audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but critics took to the film more warmly. The Brian Helgeland flick about the notorious Kray brothers tackles the true story of the British twin criminals with a unique gimmick: Hardy plays them both. 

The Krays rose to power in London in the 1960s and were known for using brutal violence to achieve their goals. Hardy is aided by cutting-edge special effects work that allow his dual performances to be married together convincingly. The rest of the cast is filled out by the likes of Taron Egerton, David Thewlis, Christopher Eccleston, and Emily Browning.

As many critics noted, the main reason to watch "Legend" is for Hardy's performances rather than the plot. The two Kray brothers have drastically different personalities, with Reggie being suave and business minded while Ronnie is volatile and mentally unstable, allowing Hardy to showcase an impressive range. Peter Howell of the Toronto Star noted that "Watching Tom Hardy nearly upstage himself in the gangster biopic 'Legend' makes for mesmerizing viewing. It's also an object lesson in how great acting can transcend a film's limitations."

Did Hardy and Shia LaBeouf brawl on the set of this otherwise forgettable bootlegger drama? Well, that depends on who you ask.

Director John Hillcoat (who previously made the Australian western "The Proposition") and musician Nick Cave (who wrote the screenplays for both films and composed the original scores alongside frequent collaborator Warren Ellis) re-teamed for this Depression-era film, adapted from the book "The Wettest County in the World" and telling the tale of three Virginia brothers whose anti-Prohibition efforts run afoul of local law enforcement.

Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska play a pair of love interests alongside Hardy, LaBeouf, Jason Clarke and Guy Pearce, and Gary Oldman has a small but memorable role as the Tommy-gun spraying mobster Floyd Banner.

"There are too many action-movie clichés without enough dramatic purpose, and interesting themes and anecdotes are scattered around without being fully explored," wrote A.O. Scott in is New York Times review. "This is weak and cloudy moonshine: it doesn't burn or intoxicate."

"WAZ," also known by the titles "WΔZ," "W Delta Z," and "The Killing Gene," is a serial killer film with a twisted premise involving mutilation, torture, and captives being forced to choose between their own lives and the lives of their family members. Released in 2007, comparisons were drawn between "WAZ" and the "Saw" series, which began a few years earlier. Nigel Andrews of the Financial Times said "Think of Saw and multiply it by Seven."

Stellan Skarsgård stars as Detective Eddie Argo, the man tasked with stopping the serial killer. Tom Hardy plays Pierre Jackson, one of the killer's captives who is tortured and forced to choose between saving his own life and dooming a loved one. Audiences didn't take too fondly to "WAZ," but Rotten Tomatoes critics found it to be a worthwhile if excessively bleak thriller, such as Kim Newman with Empire Magazine, who wrote "If you've got the stomach for strong scenes of torture, and the heart to take part in an uncomfortable debate about human nature, this intelligent horror is well worth your time."

The movie that put Hardy on the map, "Bronson" didn't make a ton of money — but it seems like everybody who saw it was a filmmaker who suddenly wanted Hardy for their next project.

A highly-stylized prison film from Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn ("Drive," "The Neon Demon"), Hardy stars as Charles Bronson, but not that Charles Bronson. It might be more accurate to say that Hardy plays a man named Michael Peterson, who adopts an alter ego named Charles Bronson after becoming delusional while spending decades in solitary confinement. The film is loosely based on the true story of the man who became infamously known as the most violent prisoner in the UK, via Psychiatric Times.

With a warm reception from critics and audiences alike, "Bronson" is the first Tom Hardy film so far on this list to earn the coveted "certified fresh" badge of approval on Rotten Tomatoes. Hardy went through an extreme physical transformation for the role, and is nearly unrecognizable in the part. Much acclaim was made for Hardy's leading performance, such as Damon Wise with Radio Times, who said "Hardy does an admirable job of making this monster human, which he achieves with surprising wit and a visceral, attention-grabbing passion."

2015 was a huge year for Hardy, with "Child 44," "Legend," "Mad Max: Fury Road," "The Revenant," and this British murder-mystery-musical all seeing release. It was such an impressive year for the actor, in fact, that he even won the title of top British/Irish Actor of the Year from the London Critics Circle. 

While the musical and murder-mystery genres seldom intersect, "London Road" is an exception. The story focuses on the residents of rural Ipswich's titular London Road as they reel from the shocking news of five dead prostitutes turning up in their typically quiet town. The story comes from a real-life string of serial killings that took place in 2006.

Writer Alecky Blythe doubles as a journalist and conducted extensive interviews with Ipswich locals while the killings were taking place. These interviews were transcribed directly into what became the script, and were set to music in a unique and experimental hybrid. "London Road" was executed first as a stage production, and the same writer (Blythe) and director (Rufus Norris) created the film version as well. Hardy has a small role as a creepy cab driver who just might be the elusive killer, but at the forefront of the ensemble cast is the wonderful Olivia Colman.

A certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes film that audiences enjoyed even more than critics, "The Revenant" adapted the novel of the same name by Michael Punke, which was itself partially based on the true story of Hugh Glass, though injected with elements of historical fiction. By all accounts, it was an incredibly difficult film to shoot.

Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar for his performance as Hugh Glass, a fur trapper in the early 1800s who vows revenge after being viciously mauled by a bear and subsequently left for dead by fellow fur trapper John Fitzgerald (Hardy). Will Poulter and Domhnall Gleeson also feature in prominent roles.

The film was a big hit at the Academy Awards, racking up a whopping 12 Oscar nominations in total. Hardy received his first (and so far only) Oscar nomination for his impressive, intense supporting work.

"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" follows MI6 spy veteran George Smiley — played by Gary Oldman in an Oscar nominated performance — as he returns to the field to root out an undercover Russian spy embedded within the agency. The story was adapted from the novel of the same name written by Irish author John le Carré, who is considered by many to be one of the foremost masters of the spy genre, rivaling Ian Fleming's "James Bond" novels. Though the "Tinker Tailor" film stands on its own as a contained piece of work, the novel is one of many le Carré novels that inhabit the same world and feature the character of George Smiley.

Hardy is part of an impressive supporting cast that also features the likes of Mark Strong, John Hurt, Colin Firth, David Dencik, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Stephen Graham, and Benedict Cumberbatch. "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" was directed by Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson, who also made the highly-acclaimed vampire film "Let the Right One In."

The same year as "Tinker Tailor," Hardy starred alongside Joel Edgerton in "Warrior." Hardy and Edgerton play a pair of estranged brothers vying for supremacy in the mixed marital arts cage to win a massive prize purse. Returning home after serving as a U.S. Marine, Hardy's Tommy character turns to his ex-boxer, alcoholic father —played by Nick Nolte (and earning an Oscar nomination for his supporting performance) — to train him to fight professionally on the MMA circuit.

It is easy to draw comparisons between "Warrior" and the Oscar winning "The Fighter" from one year prior, as both films were similar thematically and beloved by Rotten Tomatoes. "Warrior" was directed by Gavin O'Connor, who also directed the Ben Affleck films "The Accountant" and "The Way Back." O'Connor co-wrote the screenplay to "Warrior" with Cliff Dorfman and Anthony Tambakis, and the result is a great film that any Hardy completist needs to track down.

The first of three collaborations between Hardy and Christopher Nolan, "Inception" cast "Revenant" enemies Hardy and Leonardo DiCaprio as partners in an elite team of dream manipulators in this mind-bending science-fiction story about professional thieves employing mind-invasion technology to steal and implant memories. Co-starring Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Caine, Elliot Page, Ken Watanabe, Tom Berenger, Cillian Murphy, and Pete Postlethwaite, the film proved to be both an audience pleaser and a box-office force. 

Taking in more than $850 million worldwide on a $160 million budget (via Box Office Mojo), "Inception" was also nominated for eight Academy Awards and took home half of them, including Oscars in the sound mixing, sound editing, cinematography, and visual effects categories.

He may have been under a mask and sounding like Sean Connery had dubbed his voice, but Hardy's work in the 3rd Nolan Batman film was so powerful that it nonetheless made his take on Bane one of the all-time iconic portrayals of a Dark Knight villain.

Appearing alongside Christian Bale, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy, and others reprising their roles from earlier Batman films, "Rises" introduces  Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (AKA Catwoman), Joseph Gordon-Levitt as officer John Blake, Marion Cotillard as Talia al Ghul, and Hardy as the film's main super villain, a preternaturally strong, highly intelligent Gotham terrorist with a wealth of resources at his disposal and the power of the disaffected at his back.

Christopher Nolan's final "Dark Knight" movie was well received by critics and audiences alike, although it did rank lower than the previous "Dark Knight" film and is genuinely viewed as the weakest of the trilogy; indeed, it currently resides the lowest with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes.

A hardboiled crime film from the mind of Boston-based author turned screenwriter Dennis Lehane, this largely-forgotten flick put Hardy alongside the likes of James Gandolfini and Noomi Rapace in the tale of a Brooklyn bartender caught up in a criminal investigation following a failed robbery. After facilitating money drops for local gangsters, Hardy's character finds himself in the crosshairs when money goes missing via an ill-advised robbery.

Featuring the final performance of the late, beloved Gandolfini, "The Drop" is a solid, gritty little thriller. The film made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, where Gandolfini was given a special tribute.

Fans of gimmick movies take note: this film not only features a great Hardy performance, but it's also almost entirely located in an automobile. 

Hardy is present throughout 100% of this movie and is, in fact, the only actor to appear onscreen in the entire film. He plays Ivan Locke, a construction manager who abandons his family and a major work project one night when he receives a piece of news that forces him into a moral and ethical dilemma. While he makes the long drive from Birmingham to London, Locke engages in a series of phone calls that allows the story to unfold.

Though they never appear on camera, the supporting cast is packed with stars lending their voices to the other side of Locke's various phone calls. Olivia Colman, Tom Holland, Andrew Scott, and Ruth Wilson all give compelling vocal performances. With the film taking place solely within the confines of a moving car, the entirety of it rests on Hardy's shoulders, and he, thankfully, delivers. 

Most Rotten Tomatoes critics agreed that Hardy's performance was strong enough to overcome the film's potential pitfalls, such as Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News, who said "Yes, it sounds like a gimmick. But Tom Hardy is so compelling, multilayered and terrific in the title role, this one-man show is never dull."

The third collaboration between Hardy and Nolan is the highest rated among the actor's films, with this World War II tale taking a look at the land, air, and sea conflict that raged between the British, French and German militaries in and around the small port town of Dunkirk, France. 

Rotating through three main perspectives on the battle (land forces attempting to evacuate by sea, civilians attempting an escape, and a pair of pilots engaging the Germans in aerial dogfighting), the movie brings an adrenaline-fueled sense of urgency to events from long ago, effectively bringing the story to vivid life for modern viewers.

Tom Hardy plays Farrier, one of the British fighter pilots. Fionn Whitehead, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Jack Lowden, Kenneth Branagh, Barry Keoghan, and more make up the huge, impressive cast. "Dunkirk" was a hit at the Oscars, earning eight Academy Award nominations and winning in the film editing, sound editing, and sound mixing categories. The original score, cinematography, production design, and directing all earned Oscar nominations along with an overall Best Picture nod.

Hardy most certainly taught Mel Gibson who he was with this intense, breathless performance, taking over as Max Rockatansky (who Gibson played decades earlier in Miller's genre-defining post-apocalyptic trilogy "Mad Max," "The Road Warrior," and "Beyond Thunderdome.") By the time the dust cleared, "Fury Road" had become the highest-rated film of the entire franchise.

With Miller returning to make "Fury Road" after 30 years away from the world of "Mad Max," he had plenty of space to develop a bigger production, deeper lore and unforgettable characters. Charlize Theron stars as Imperator Furiosa alongside Hardy, and Nicholas Hoult has a memorable supporting role as Nux, the war boy who manages a change of heart. The film's main villain, Immortan Joe, was played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, the same actor who played Toecutter, the main villain of the first "Mad Max" movie all the way back in 1979. 

For the first time in the history of the "Mad Max" series, "Fury Road" was a big hit at the Oscars, racking up an impressive 10 Academy Award nominations and winning in six of its categories.

"Hardy has now appeared in both of the decade's great road pictures, although his role here couldn't be more different than last year's 'Locke'," wrote The Wrap in its review. "That film had him taking phone calls from start to finish, whereas his tormented Max barely opens his mouth, with his profound silences never diminishing his screen presence, much in the same way that Miller so often generates thrills over what we can't see as much as over what we can ... Miller redefined action cinema with 'The Road Warrior,' and it's no stretch to suggest that 'Fury Road' ups the ante on what the genre might deliver in the future."