A fine effort sunk by Tom Cruise

Rating: 6/10 (11 January 2009)

On seeing this film, my first reaction was that Tom Cruise's role was enhanced for the film. Last night I read the portion of "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" by William L. Shirer that covers this period, and it looks like his role was not exaggerated much (beyond the "white knight" uniform). In fact, the movie goes to great lengths to portray all of the major characters in the story accurately. In fact, I'd almost swear the screenplay was lifted pretty much whole from Shirer's book. (It is a very big book, and is a classic. It was published in 1959, 14 years after the end of the war.)
I'm very interested in this period, so I enjoyed the movie immensely. We forget the past very quickly, and we have mostly forgotten how murderous the Nazis really were. As a result of this coup attempt, the Gestapo tracked down, tried, and executed almost 5,000 Germans, both civilians and military officers. Many of these were middle or upper class (like the characters we see in the film). It's still hard to imagine that this happened in a European state that had a democratically elected government before Hitler took over the state.
As for the movie, I think its main fault was using Tom Cruise for the lead. He just leaves me cold, in every way. Although he is very good looking, I think this must have made him a total narcissist, because he never really seems to connect emotionally with any of his fellow actors -- and there were a whole lot of very good actors in this film. Even the shots where he is kissing his wife don't show his face ... which I suspect looks like a dead fish. For such a good looking guy, he has just zero sex appeal.