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Colonel Claus Schenk, Graf von Stauffenberg and Tom Cruise

What a gyp. I expected Valkyrie to be ghastly but it’s quite decent. Somewhat stiff, but not the disaster I’d been led to expect. Clearly everyone’s turned on Tom Cruise: after years of sucking up to him they’ve decided that he’s mad and they have to cover up their lip prints on his shoes.

Valkyrie’s two main problems: the material, and Tom Cruise. Director Bryan Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie signed on to make a thriller about an event whose outcome is well-known. (The audience may be unaware of the plots in the German military establishment to kill Hitler, but they have some idea that Hitler was not assassinated by his own men. At least I hope they do. Many years ago I was at a screening of Romeo and Juliet, and the girls sitting behind me were genuinely shocked at the ending.) Singer and McQuarrie may have brought us The Usual Suspects, but barring an alternative-history approach I don’t see how they could’ve Keyser Soze’d this material. Parts of it are thrilling, though. In one squirm-inducing scene, Stauffenberg has to arm the bomb with his one hand but it keeps slipping from his grasp.

Then there is Cruise. He is miscast as an aristocratic German patriot. He does not convey Stauffenberg’s moral convictions, inner conflict, or the burden of command. Though he is in his 40s, he still comes across as a boy playing dress-up. In one scene Stauffenberg, who lost an eye while serving in North Africa, takes off his eyepatch to put on a glass eye cover. This is interesting because Cruise’s liabilities as an actor are his eyes and his voice. His eyes are cold and expressionless—he is a cypher, which is why he is effective at playing assholes (Rainman—too bad the audience was taken in by Hoffman’s autistic savant act, Magnolia—they should’ve given him the Oscar so he would stop trying so hard, and Tropic Thunder—it’s a good idea to make him unrecognizable). The glass eye: redundant. As for his voice, it is not one to inspire awe and loyalty among his men, and when he raises it, it gets whiny.

Stauffenberg is an old school hero-type role, and Tom just doesn’t have the heft. Halfway through the movie, Thomas Kretschmann turns up—there’s an old school hero type, and he’s already played a sympathetic Nazi in Polanski’s The Pianist. As for the rest of the cast, Kenneth Branagh appears early on as a conspirator, only to be sent to the front and replaced by Cruise. You feel the loss. Oy, the ups and downs of a career: Branagh played Heydrich at the Wannsee Conference in the TV movie Conspiracy, and he was so brilliant it was terrifying. Valkyrie has plenty of prestige casting. Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp walk through their roles and Tom Hollander is properly nasty. Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard play a couple of generals who are in on the plot. I don’t know about you, but if I were planning to kill the Fuhrer, Nighy and Izzard would not be my go-to guys.

As the conspiracy unfolds many documents are prepared and telegrams sent out, and that’s when you see how the Germans nearly took over the world: their spelling and typing are perfect.

Background reading: Why did Stauffenberg plant the bomb? by Richard J. Evans. Karl Heinz Bohrer disagrees.