Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
Tom Cruise “Laughable” in Valkyrie
MSNBC’s The Scoop has some very, very unsettling reactions to a Valkyrie screening. For those of you that missed the drama, Valkyrie is a Tom Cruise/Bryan Singer film (marketed as a thriller) which saw many production delays, lost negatives and injuries to extras. After all that, the film was bumped up to a February release date, the month that movies go to die, then later moved up to December 26th of this year in an attempt to quash internet rumors that Valkyrie blew.
The fate of Cruise’s United Artists might hang in the balance with this film, so these quotes are all the more unsettling…
From The Scoop:
those who’ve gotten an early glimpse say not only is the film nowhere near as exciting as a thriller, but Cruise’s performance elicits uncomfortable and inappropriate laughs.
Among them: A scene where Cruise’s character, Claus Von Stauffenberg, is forced to give the infamous “Heil Hitler” salute. “It’s an unsettling scene but you almost start to laugh,” the source says. “His character is resisting it but you never forget it’s Tom Cruise saying ‘Heil Hitler.’ It’s funny and shocking at the same time.”
Sources also described a scene where Cruise’s character Claus Von Stauffenberg removes a false eye. “It was disgusting,” said one person who saw the film. “It was like watching someone pluck their contacts out.”
“The film just isn’t a thriller at all” said one “Valkyrie” viewer. “It’s a bunch of white guys in Nazi uniforms. It’s too bad. And Tom doesn’t speak with a German accent — though they did add a voiceover of him speaking German to the beginning of the film. Still, it’s as if he could say ‘I complete you’ at any time. This is not his Oscar moment.”
Is it possible Valkyrie is still the steaming pile we thought it once was? Will Tom Cruise have the worst movie with a coveted pre-Oscar release date?
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