Is Tom Cruise a good Nazi after all?

Early reviews of Valkyrie, Tom Cruise's film about the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler during World War 11, have been unkind, as reported here on Christmas Eve. One German reviewer suggested that the actor's portrayal of Claus von Stauffenberg, the Prussian army officer behind the botched coup, was so appalling that it might mark the end of his career, while an American critic called him possibly “the goofiest-haired Nazi in history”.

However, late in the day, the film is suddenly getting better notices. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, the highly acclaimed director whose film The Lives of Others won the foreign language film Oscar in 2007, has been particularly complimentary. Reviewing the movie for ZDF, Germany's public broadcast station, he said: "Valkyrie is neither scandalously bad nor the event of the century. Neither is it the action thriller we feared, but it is a well-made and serious film." He added that: "Germany's hope is called Tom Cruise."

The reviewer for the Koelner Stadt Anzeiger was no less impressed. "[The fear that] the myth of the German resistance would be put through a Hollywood filter has turned out to be wrong and prejudicial. On the contrary, the American origin of this film is its biggest advantage."

That said, there remained some dissenting voices about Cruise's performance. The critic for the Badische Zeitung wrote: "The film is well-crafted, no explosive, loud war drama but a calm, chronological tale ... the main weakness is Cruise himself, who appears in almost every scene but is stiff."
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