February 8, 2009

Movie Review - Valkyrie *** (out of 5)

Tom Cruise is the most over-rated actor of our time but honestly he's not too bad in this film. That's not a high recommendation, I know, and it wasn't meant to be. It's just to say that even though Tom Cruise stars in it I thought it was a pretty good film.
You always know he's acting, you always know it's Tom Cruise - he doesn't inhabit his characters the way someone like Tom Hanks does. With Tom Hanks his face tells the story, he doesn't even have to say anything. Cruise's idea of acting is to lower his voice and speak in hushed tones. That means, "Okay, I'm being very serious here."
Anyway, the film is good but I found it very hard to follow. I had a hard time keeping all the characters straight and they all looked the same to me in their uniforms. I got the gist of what was going on, of course, but the nuances of the plot to assasinate Hitler eluded me. This is a film, I think, that would benefit from a second viewing, but I didn't like it enough to see it again.

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