Valkyrie

The very premise of Bryan Singer’s Valkyrie paints it into a corner: It’s a World War II action epic that tries to get you to root for Nazis. Tom Cruise plays Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a German loyalist maimed in battle who has become disillusioned with Hitler’s atrocities. He teams up with a group of courageous officers to assassinate the Führer, but despite its grind-house premise—The Nazis Who Killed Hitler!—Valkyrie is heavy-handed and slow. Much of the plot involves standing around and debating moral imperatives, and Cruise, robbed of his tendency for physical acting, is lifeless and borderline silly. Singer spends too much time making pretty pictures of Nazis, fetishizing their jackboot fashion and finding ways to frame people against giant swastikas and fluttering SS flags.