We saw Valkyrie a week or so ago at the Village Pointe theater. As we had heard, the movie was pretty good — it would have been better were it not for Tom Cruise. The guy wasn’t terribly convincing, and the character development was somewhat lacking. Still, it’s worth seeing the movie. I can’t get too much more enthusiastic about it, much as I would like to.
Cruise does a pretty good job of playing Tom Cruise. Sadly, I think Risky Business was pretty much this guy’s peak performance. OK, maybe that’s unkind. While checking out his other performances for those I may have forgotten, I was reminded of Collateral. It’s perhaps the one role in which he really surprised me. The Mission:Impossible movies were OK — as usual with a franchise like that one, it was all down hill after the first — but still, it was Tom Cruise playing a Tom Cruise-y character.
Of course it may be that I am just having more and more trouble looking past the wacko Scientology thing. I mean, seriously. The movie with a different lead would have been worth three and a half or four stars. With Cruise, two and a half. Sorry, it’s the best I can manage.