Saw This Coming a Mile Away

Much ado has been made about "Valkyrie," starring Tom Cruise as would-be Hitler assassin Col. Claus von Stauffenberg.

There is the release date, which has been moved around several times until finally being set for Christmas, the perfect time for a feel-good movie about killing Nazis. There's the marketing of the film: Is it a historical thriller featuring Cruise in an eye patch, or is it a straight-up action picture full of explosions? And then, of course, there is the Cruise factor itself -- the fact that his very presence adds a layer of tabloid-friendly fascination.

Turns out Cruise is both the central figure in "Valkyrie" and its weakest link. He's distractingly bad in this, the iconography of his celebrity so strongly overshadowing his performance. He's just too powerfully contemporary. With his hard, flat American accent, he stands out in every single scene. And he's not a good enough actor to immerse himself in this kind of period piece, or allow us to do the same. (Then again, if he had affected a German accent -- or a British one to blend in among his co-stars -- he would have invited derision for that, too. Maybe the guy just can't win.)

It's too bad, too, because "Valkyrie" looks great. With its impeccable production design and German locations -- including the Bendlerblock in Berlin, where Operation Valkyrie began and where members of the anti-Nazi resistance were executed after it failed -- it feels substantial, never CGI-fake, and it moves fluidly. No one ever doubted the ability of Bryan Singer, director of the first two "X-Men" movies, to make a solid, energetic actioner. But -- and this is going to sound like more piling on -- Cruise undermines the potential of "Valkyrie" at every turn.

He's outclassed and outmatched by every member of the strong supporting cast, any of whom would have been more believable as Stauffenberg: Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp and Bill Nighy as fellow German officers, even Eddie Izzard, who's a unique and unexpected choice.

Then again, the script from Christopher McQuarrie, who won an Academy Award for writing Singer's breakthrough film "The Usual Suspects," never fully fleshes out his......

I have telling this to my family for a month. You just can't a do WW2 movie about Germany without at least attempting to sound German. I commented on Current a month ago about this. The scenery looks spectacular, the story is well known, why didn't they hire an actor who could pull it off. Or why didn't Tom Cruise strive to be good at his trade for once. He would have been great IF he would just worked hard enough. He still may look 25 but he still acts 25 also. You can't play the only good Nazi in World War 2 and sound like a teenager from Bel Air California. Tom you are Fuppin Lame.