Interview: Tom Cruise
A Great Plot

We talk to Valkyrie’s Tom Cruise about playing a German colonel plotting to kill Hitler

It’s a tragic, true story about Nazis, a plot to kill Hitler and, as star Tom Cruise puts it, “the most horrific crimes toward humanity.” And yet Valkyrie is opening on Christmas Day.

Perhaps not the traditional way to spend the most wonderful day of the year, but in an exclusive interview with Famous, Cruise — who also executive produced the pic for his own studio, United Artists — says you have to dig a little deeper.

“This is a film that we could have released any day because when you’re talking about an inspiring story and heroism, there really isn’t a date for it,” Cruise says over the phone from his L.A. home. “Christmas is also the biggest time for films, and that’s why we release so many movies from a studio perspective. You’ve got lots of screens, people are going to go to a lot of different movies, and you want to have your film released at a time when audiences are really going.”

When Cruise talks about heroism, he’s referring to his character Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a German officer who opposed Hitler and joined with the German Resistance to spearhead an assassination attempt from the inside. Having already lost an eye, his right hand and two of the fingers on his left hand during a military operation in North Africa, von Stauffenberg was willing to risk his life and the lives of his wife and children in order to remove Hitler from power.

“As the war went on he finally realized he had to get inside the high command, come up with this plan,” explains Cruise. “Then, ultimately, he was the one that had the courage to go in with the bomb.”

If successful, the plot would kill the German dictator (played in the movie by David Bamber, best known in North America as smarmy Mr. Collins from the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice) and turn power over to Germany’s Reserve Army rather than simply opening the door for another dictator. “Stauffenberg understood the micro and the macro,” says Cruise. “He knew that you couldn’t just kill Hitler because you had Himmler, Goebbels and Göring. There is this philosophy, and people would follow the government. They swore this oath to Hitler.”
There’s another reason it’s not so strange to release this difficult film over the holidays. It’s an action pic.

Despite the setting and themes, Valkyrie — which was written by Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects) and directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men, Superman Returns) — is a thriller. With a budget estimated at $95-million (U.S.), the movie is filled with explosions, neatly choreographed action scenes and a stylish score.

“I make movies, I’m not a documentary filmmaker, and it’s storytelling,” says Cruise. “This isn’t a history lesson, even though the film is authentic.”

Ultimately, says Cruise, this is entertainment. And if he and the rest of the filmmakers did their jobs well, even though the audience knows that the plot failed, they’ll suspend that knowledge for a couple of hours and root for the good guys.

“They’re still on the edge of their seats,” Cruise says. “You still go on this ride with [von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators]. It’s like Apollo 13, Ron Howard’s film. We all know how it’s going to end and yet we’re still on the edge of our seats wondering, ‘Please!’ And that is storytelling.”  

Marni Weisz is the editor of Famous.

For the full Tom Cruise interview, pick up the January issue of Famous.