First reviews of Tom Cruise in “Valkyrie” are not good

Nothing says Christmas like a feel-good movie about killing Nazis, am I right? Right? So this new movie from Tom Cruise, “Valkyrie”, is probably a win-win. Surprisingly, it’s getting horrible reviews, centered around the miscasting of Tom himself in a role that could have been better acted by, oh, pretty much anyone. Here’s an excerpt from just one review I read this morning:

Turns out Cruise is both the central figure in “Valkyrie” and its weakest link. He’s distractingly bad in this, the iconography of his celebrity so strongly overshadowing his performance. He’s just too powerfully contemporary. With his hard, flat American accent, he stands out in every single scene. And he’s not a good enough actor to immerse himself in this kind of period piece, or allow us to do the same.

– source

Ouch! Now, I actually like Tom Cruise, but he needs to stick with what he’s good at: action movies with simple plots in which we see a lot of things blow up. Complicated dialogue or subtle plots are just not his specialty.