According to relatives of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, Tom Cruise isn’t man enough to portray the late hero. Stauffenberg’s great nephew claims Cruise just doesn’t have the chops or the stature to convincingly carry the lead in Valykyrie:

Ahead of the film’s release in Germany this week, Franz von Stauffenberg told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that Cruise failed to capture what inspired people to join forces with his great-uncle Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg.

“Tom Cruise seems terribly cautious, almost as if he were afraid of playing the role. He tries to seem elegant but comes across as extremely stiff,” Mr von Stauffenberg, who has himself acted in minor television roles, said after seeing Valkyrie.

“He seems not at all decisive in the role and above all not charismatic enough. On the whole he just seems too small.”

Cruise plays Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, a Prussian aristocrat who played a key role in a plot to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944.

Sydney Morning Herald

Stauffenberg would have been quite a strong character to have people support him in a plot to kill their country’s leader, and many have trouble seeing past Tom Cruise’s personality. Maybe if he’d had the confidence to use a German accent the transformation would be more convincing. Tom speaks a few lines of German, before reverting to non-accented English, as does the rest of the cast. Only the baddies speak with German accents. Possibly it would have been best to just use all American or British accents.

Valkyrie is getting reasonable reviews, it currently is rated at 57% on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s also doing well at the box office with a respectable $78.2 million domestic total, according to BoxOfficeMojo. Ultimately the opinions of the movie-going public carry much more weight than what the late protagonist’s family thinks.

Tom Cruise is shown arriving at an interview in Berlin on 1/19/09. Credit: WENN