Is Horrible 'Valkyrie' Tom Cruise's Nazi Apologia?

foxnews.com ^ | December 26, 2008 | Roger Friedman

[Free ThinkerNY]

Say what you will about Tom Cruise’s acting in other movies; in "Valkyrie," which opened yesterday, he is awful. Amid British and European actors, Cruise stands out like a sore thumb. He doesn’t even attempt a German accent, his mannerisms are all from his "Jerry Maguire" era, and his earnestness suggests at best some kind of fictional American soldier trying to infiltrate the Luftwaffe. You knew it would be bad, and it is.

I’m more concerned that “Valkyrie” could represent a new trend in filmmaking: Nazi apologia. We know already what Valkyrie is about: a group of German soldiers who tried to assassinate Hitler in 1944 and failed. Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg—referred to in this film constantly as “Stauffenberg”—as if to make him sound less German or something.

On top of that, there is the matter of the uniforms and the set design. Suddenly, we have German officers in World War II who are not wearing arm bands. Their swastikas are now small tokens on chests of medals. They look more like airline pilots than Nazi soldiers. When they meet, it looks like they’re at a lovely retreat in the Adirondacks. Director Bryan Singer is so sparing with his Nazi flags, swastikas, etc that you’d think the Nazis hardly existed. What’s everyone so upset about anyway?

Because in “Valkyrie” Singer opens the door to a dangerous new thought: that the Holocaust and all the other atrocities could be of secondary important to the cause of German patriotism.

[radiohead]

Maybe this will help....

Well yes, yes it does. : )

Too bad Cruise still strikes me as a mediocre actor for this important role.

[Joe 6-pack]

I haven’t seen the movie yet, although I probably will. I’m not a big Cruise fan, but every now and then, he does something right...I liked him in Last Samurai. He does look a lot like von Stauffenberg, but quite honestly, I think a slightly younger Mark Harmon would have also been a good match and he’s also a consistently better actor.

[wolf78]

In July 1944 the US/UK forces were still in Normandy and the Soviets were just capturing Minsk. I have to think we would have only kept fighting to keep the Soviets as far from western Europe as possible.

The idea was to surrender to the western powers and let them march through Germany and stop the Russians from actually taking over half of Europe. You know, France and the UK declared war over the invasion of Poland, the same Poland that Russia also invaded - and for the most part kept afterwards, BTW.