I have such a primal dislike for Tom Cruise as a person that I’ve generally refused to see most of his movies, and it turns out I’ve been missing out on a pretty decent actor. I’m not really good at separating the things I hear about someone famous from the work they do. So when I sat through Jerry Maguire, part of me was always thinking “You’re a midget control freak!” And most of Vanilla Sky was actually comprised of my inner monologue on loop, saying, “You believe in an alien god and think half your cast mates are Thetans.” But then I saw Minority Report and Magnolia and realized I should learn to ignore all the crazy that is Tom Cruise for the sake of two hours of entertainment. So with the caveat that I’m no Tom Cruise expert, I have to say that the trailer for his newest movie, Valkyrie, looks pretty good. Some of his clips come off as a bit over-acted, but I’m under the impression that that’s his thing.

Here’s a brief synopsis of the film:

During World War II, the German Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) is severely wounded in Africa and returns home to Nazi Germany. Stauffenberg helps conceive Operation Valkyrie, a plan to implement a shadow government in the event of the death of Germany’s Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler. The Colonel eventually joins the German Resistance and becomes part of the July 20 Plot, a conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and execute Valkyrie in order to take control of the country and make peace with the Allies. Stauffenberg finds himself taking on not only the responsibility of leading the coup, but also the task to assassinate Hitler himself.

[From Wikipedia]

Here’s the trailer – I think it looks pretty interesting, but I’ll see just about any historical movie and love it.