Valkyrie ... why, why why?

[CheezeFlixz]

First I love war movies I have 100's of them and I overlook mistakes all the time in favor of entertainment. Tom Cruise needs to stick to what he's good at, which is being the top "celebutard" jumping on Oprah's couch.

So why did they use Tom Cruise? Why? This could have been a good movie, a great movie, but no they put Tom Cruise in it which is about a convincing of a German as I am of an Italian ... which is to say no even close.

So many actors could have done such a far better job in this role but alas they ruined it with Jerry Maguire plays Jerry the German. It's not only that I don't like Cruise and I'll admit as soon as I heard about this movie I was questioning the casting of Cruise and I wasn't disappointed. Now, I was willing to give him a chance and he blew it. So out of place, so poorly acted so sad, to make sure it wasn't just my bias against Cruise I asked others on the way out of the theater if it was just me? Nope, other were asking the same question "Why Cruise?" and offered ideas of better choices.

Some would have rather had ... (those choices in no order)

John Malkovich
Jason Statham
Kevin Spacey
Jean Reno


Those and so so many others would have been a better choice ... what was the casting director thinking? Cruise lost his big time box office draw long ago, he still has some but not nearly what it was, so why cast a boarder line actor with boarder line popularity at the cost of a good movie.

It's worth seeing but catch on DVD or a matinée it's not a full price ticket movie.

Just my opinion. 

[BeyondTheGrave]

I have to admit Cruise is the reason I wouldn't go near the movie. He seemed to be out of place in what looks like a serious movie.

On another note The advisements and posters for movie seemed pretty bad. I passed a couple of posters on the subway and thought it was a new cable drama staring Tom Cruise. A friend pointed out it was a movie. Honestly would have never knew it was.

[ghouck]

I read a review of the movie, they slated Cruise's performance as "Distractingly bad".

[Jack]

Too bad, I'd like to see a big budget WWII movie, but I'm completely uninterested in another Tom Cruise vehicle.  Like one of the reviews asked, "How many movies can they make around this one character?"

[Dave M]

The concept of the movie puts me off a little bit, since (I could be wrong, since I haven't seen it) it seems kind of like we're supposed to pretend as viewers that the people trying to assasinate Hitler were these princes among men who were trying to stop the Holocaust or something. They were all for it, and might have even prolonged it if they'd suceeded.

[indianasmith]

Dave -  do some research.  The Holocaust was Hitler's baby.  The Prussian officer class might have had a bit of genteel anti-Semitism, but for the most part they were an honorable class of professional warriors who despised the Austrian corporal, especially when the reverses of the war showed his glaring lack of military ability.  Like all Germans, they got a little carried away by the vision of avenging the humiliation of 1918 and drubbing the hated French. Some of them even came to have a grudging admiration for Hitler's audacity in they heady days of 1940, when the European world fell before them like bowling pins.   But most of them never really liked Hitler, and many of the best of them, like Rommell and Canaris, despised him.  They tried to kill Hitler several times during the war, and failed.  Valkyrie was their last and best effort, and it came VERY close to success.  But the professional German soldiers were not a part of the Holocaust - they left that to Himmler's thugs.

All things considered, I still want to see the movie.  But not as badly as I did before.

[CheezeFlixz]

They tried to kill Hitler several times during the war, and failed.

42 known attempts, and Hitler barely ever got a scratch  ... makes you think.

Anywho ... If it's a war movie, I'm there and I'm watching it. I knew in my gut this was going to be sub-par with Cruise, but I really tried to give him a chance, now I just want him to go away. Go far away and never be heard from again. I should have gone and seen "The Tale of Despereaux" with the wife and kids.

[indianasmith]

I had planned to see it this weekend, but Santa took all my money  . . . . and I have bottle babies to feed! LOL

BTW, congrats on hitting the 400 karma mark!

[Susan]

Off topic, was there a scene in this movie where tom cruise runs really fast? lol I'm kind of obsessed with identifying this in his movies..lol

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx2u7f8yg6s

[Dave M]

I don't want to turn this into an OT debate thread (there, I worded that just right to sound like I'm Mr Peacemaker when I'm the one who risked starting something to begin with, and not like I just don't want to bother doing some research), but I'm just saying the assasins weren't Righteous Gentiles like Schindler. Guys like Rommel would have focused more on the war effort (I mean, if they'd managed to kill Hitler before the war was essentially lost) than the Final Solution, but they weren't going to close the camps up and send everyone home either. And if Germany had surrendered (which is what the later assasination attempts were mostly about; getting a leader sane enough to negotiate a surrender before the Soviets march straight into the capital) without the total destruction and Allied occupation that happened, the Allies wouldn't have been liberating the camps, that wasn't a huge millitary objective. I'm not sure that the movie actually tries to present the assasins as essentially anti-Nazi, anti-Holocaust Nazis, but that is the immpression I get from what I've heard.

[CheezeFlixz]

I don't want to turn this into an OT debate thread (there, I worded that just right to sound like I'm Mr Peacemaker when I'm the one who risked starting something to begin with, and not like I just don't want to bother doing some research), but I'm just saying the assasins weren't Righteous Gentiles like Schindler. Guys like Rommel would have focused more on the war effort (I mean, if they'd managed to kill Hitler before the war was essentially lost) than the Final Solution, but they weren't going to close the camps up and send everyone home either. And if Germany had surrendered (which is what the later assasination attempts were mostly about; getting a leader sane enough to negotiate a surrender before the Soviets march straight into the capital) without the total destruction and Allied occupation that happened, the Allies wouldn't have been liberating the camps, that wasn't a huge millitary objective. I'm not sure that the movie actually tries to present the assasins as essentially anti-Nazi, anti-Holocaust Nazis, but that is the immpression I get from what I've heard.

IMHO if the German military succeeded in killing Hitler they would have immediately sought peace with the allies. Thus endless the camps and final solution.

However that doesn't change the fact the Tom Cruise can't act and ruined what could have been a good movie.

[Dave M]

IMHO, the surrender terms they would have sought (and probably gotten from the war-weary Allies) wouldn't have included a divided Germany, full exposure of what was going on in the camps, and a massive, multi-decade occupation (or else why bother killing Hitler?), hence, the Holocaust might conceivably have been scaled back a little, but wouldn't have ended. It wasn't in the interest of any of the Nazis to let millions of eye witnesses loose. What they were trying to avoid was the kind of un-conditional surrender that was forced on them by Hitler's clinging to his fantasies while the whole country was suffered total defeat (there's losing a war, and then there's having Russians build a giant wall through your capitol). Without the total defeat, occupation, etc, a lot of the existing power structure stays in place to deal with trying to mitigate the defeat by solving problems like "what are we going to do with all of this evidence that fortunately hasn't physically fallen into the hands of the Allies yet?"

This is the most masculine conversation I've had on the internet in a long time, I'll bet we're turning women on here.

Family Guy did a joke about Cruise running in every movie, I hadn't noticed it before. I think they said he's trying to outrun his gay thoughts or something.

[CheezeFlixz]

If this is the most masculine conversation you've had online, you really must visit some military and history forums, nearly every conversation is in this bane.

Truth is we'll never know what Germany would have settled for to end the war early, provided Hitler was removed. However many German's both civilian and military had no idea about the concentration camps and the "final solution" as they were primarily ran by the SS and to some extent the SA, so their existence was a closely guarded secret. This is not to say that everyone outside the SS or SA was blind to these atrocities, from my reading they weren't even well know amongst the German people, to be fair. This does nothing to wash anyones hands, just stating what I've read on it.

Then again you speak of the Russians and their divide of Berlin, take the hypothesizing one step further and listen to Patton and go ahead fight the Russian in 1945 and be done with it as opposed to 50 years of a cold war that seems to be sparking back up. In 1945 the Ruskies were nearly spent with several million dead and mass shortages everywhere on every front and a war wary populous and military.

So to stay on topic ...
None of this changes the fact the Tom Cruise can't act and runs to much.

[Susan]

I think they said he's trying to outrun his gay thoughts or something.

Tom cruise is not gay!!! The following movie proves it...doesn't it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekXxi9IKZSA

[Jim H]

I don't quite get all the Cruise hate.  I haven't seen the movie, so I can't comment on how well he fits into the role.  But people keep calling him a terrible actor, and I really don't get it.  He was excellent in Collateral, Interview With the Vampire, and Born on the 4th of July, and quite solid in other roles, like in Magnola, The Last Samurai, and Jerry Maguire.  I get the impression some people hate him as a person and extend this hate to his acting performances.  I dunno if that is the case here, of course, just sometimes seems like it.

Cheeze, other than Cruise, did you have any other major problems with the film?