Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) is a conflicted Wife Guy, frustrated by his realisation of his wife as a sexual being and simultaneously unable / unwilling to consummate his abstract sexual desire with any of the women (or men) who throw themselves at him as he descends into Dantean circles of dream. His libidinal fantasies—a beautiful and eager sex worker; a nymphet child—become completely unmoored from actual sexual desire at the dream’s deepest level with an orgy of anonymous vanilla sex free from blemishes, sweat, or any of the gritty humanness that actually makes sex exciting. His inability to consummate with anyone but his wife turns this into a nightmare as his mask literally falls away and the crowd threaten to strip him bare. Tom Cruise’s subsequent career has been a long affirmation of Kubrick’s casting as he has lost himself in dreams—cinema, endless blockbusters, a cult—while still retaining the tortured sense of inadequacy behind his eyes that we see here.