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Cruise too 'stiff' to play would-be Hitler killer
2009-01-18
BERLIN (AFP) - Tom Cruise is too stiff and too short to play the would-be assassin of Adolf Hitler in his latest movie "Valkyrie," a descendant of the real-life plotter said in an interview published Sunday. Ahead of the film's release in Germany Thursday, 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," Franz 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 July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Von Stauffenberg placed a bomb under a table in Hitler's eastern headquarters in East Prussia, in modern-day Poland, but the Nazi leader escaped with slight injuries because the briefcase carrying the explosives was unwittingly moved behind a sturdy leg of the oak table. Von Stauffenberg and other conspirators were rounded up and executed by firing squad. Franz von Stauffenberg said he had had a very different image of his forefather growing up than Cruise depicted. "From what I've learned about Claus von Stauffenberg from the literature, history books and family stories, he is meant to have been a charismatic man. Someone who inspired people with his smile, his humour and charm," he said. Despite the film's weaknesses, he said he was pleased to see his great-uncle's story given the Hollywood treatment, enabling it to reach a global audience. "It ended up being a good thriller," he said. The makers of "Valkyrie" ran into resistance in Germany because of Cruise's membership of the Church of Scientology, which is viewed here as a dangerous sect. German authorities initially denied the cast and crew permission to film at the Bendlerblock, a complex of buildings in Berlin where Operation Valkyrie was planned and where von Stauffenberg and other conspirators were executed. Cruise is due in Berlin this week to attend the gala premiere of "Valkyrie" before the movie opens in German cinemas.
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