Flawed by Cruise performance, but not a terrible thriller

Rating: 6/10 (31 December 2008)

Tom Cruise's traditional one-note performance prevents this true-life suspense thriller from being anything but a predictable, pointless exercise in hubris. Although most of the accents seem inauthentic anyway, Cruise's dull, toneless American dialect is about as sincere as Kevin Costner's legendary Robin Hood accent, without the sweeping sense of purpose. In the end, the movie is largely forgettable; given the large amount of negative publicity surrounding it and its star, this is faint praise indeed.
Colonel von Stauffenberg (Cruise) is a disillusioned German officer during World War II who decides that he and he alone must thwart the Fuhrer and save Germany from itself. He quickly discovers, though, that he's not exactly alone in that attitude, as various fellow officers (played by such luminaries as Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Terence Stamp) have been trying to take Hitler out for some time. All they need is a good plan and a good organizer.
The trouble, Stauffenberg quickly realizes, isn't the assassination itself but rather the aftermath. You can't just kill Hitler and waltz in with a new chancellor, since he does have plenty of supporters. So Staffenberg decides to co-opt an existing plan, called Valkryie, and adopt it for his own purposes. Valkyrie is intended to be the contingency plan should the Allies break through to Berlin, but Stauffenberg (rather easily) rewrites it so that one set of Germans is blamed for the assassination of Der Fuhrer, thus allowing them to be imprisoned by another set of Germans. Quite crafty.
But as any casual student of world affairs in the twentieth century can attest, this isn't how thins panned out. As we all know, Hitler eventually committed suicide in his bunker in 1945, as the war was nearing its conclusion. So obviously the Stauffenberg plan was an abject failure, which sort of removes a lot of suspense. But director Bryan Singer still manages to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, particularly during the explosion that ostensibly kills Hitler (and his cabinet); you know it's coming, but it arrives so suddenly and so organically, without any good-guy slow-motion theatrics, that it's very jarring and effective.
In addition, Singer pays less attention to What This All Means to the world (and Germany in particular) and concentrates instead on the psychological makeup of the conspirators, particularly the reticent General Olbricht (Nighy) and the decisive Stauffenberg. What happens to influence their plan? What happens that they hadn't counted on at all? Most importantly, what happens when the plan ultimately fails? So I have to give Singer a lot of credit here, building up some suspense when the outcome is already knowable to everyone.
But the overall probably, as usual, is Cruise himself: he's simply not credible in the role of a long-serving German military officer. Cruise always seems to feel that since he's such a Great Actor, he can simply slap on some accessory - in this case, an eyepatch - and he's immediately transformed into that character. Not the same guy, Stauffenberg and Cruise! Not the same guy at all! The fact is, though, that the eyepatch has more personality; Cruise is neither serious enough nor solid enough in the role for you to believe he's anything other than Tom Cruise, Movie Guy. He even rolls through his standard two or three expressions, and when that's done, he's done.
Cast with another Stauffenberg, Valkryie might have soared a bit higher, but Cruise's flawed performance is more reminiscent of an albatross than an eagle.