No cruise for Tom

Rating: Null/10 (21 February 2009)

This is certainly a tale worth telling - the 1944 unsuccessful attempt on the life of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler by a group of dissident army officers centring on the aristocratic Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. Furthermore the director Bryan Singer has an exciting record with work including the first two X-men movies. And visually it looks good, being made at Germany's Babelberg studios (which I have visited) with much of the action centred on the Nazi Army Ministry (which again I have visited - it is now a Museum of the Resistance to the Nazis).
The film opens well and, after a dullish section, finishes strongly but that "Valkyrie" fails is primarily down to the poor casting. There are some fine British actors on show, including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp (although it's hard to take comedian Eddie Izzard too seriously), but the short scientologist and American Tom Cruise as the tall, cultured German von Stauffenberg does not work at all.