Tom Cruise out of his element in "Valkyrie"

Two things become immediately clear when watching "Valkyrie": It's a competent movie with a fascinating story behind it, and it would have been much better without Tom Cruise.

It's not that Cruise is terrible; it's simply that he isn't good enough, particularly next to the likes of Tom Wilkinson and Kenneth Branagh. "Valkyrie" is the fact-based story of German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg, who in 1943 masterminded a plot to kill Adolph Hitler. Code-named Operation Valkyrie, the plan included both the Führer's murder and a scheme to overthrow his government.

Director Bryan Singer ("The Usual Suspects," "X-Men") and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie ("The Usual Suspects") have an obvious problem: We know Operation Valkyrie wasn't successful. And yet the movie manages to maintain a certain amount of suspense, particularly when Wilkinson (who plays von Stauffenberg's superior Friedrich Fromm) or Branagh (as Hitler enemy Henning von Tresckow, who insists "We have to show the world that not all of us were like him") are on screen. It's elegantly shot — those swastika flags are a startling blood-red — and dramatically scored, and the tension is well-maintained throughout, with help from some liberal use of Wagner's swirling "Ride of the Valkyries."

And yet, you just can't quite enter the world of this film, not in the way that you might have if a more nuanced and less iconic actor had played the central role. Singer inadvertently complicates things with a decision regarding accents: Rather than the usual German-accented English of a Hollywood film set in Germany (a silly convention, but one to which audiences are accustomed), he chose to have the actors speak with their own accents. (The film begins briefly in German with English subtitles, then fades to English.)

But since most of the supporting cast is British, and sound like the precisely trained actors they are, Cruise's voice stands out in an unintended way. He sounds flat, deliberate and very American, and his vocal range is limited, stretching only from an intense, slow whisper to an intense, slow, louder voice. He scowls and glares and looks boyish; in other words, Tom Cruise the movie star never disappears into Claus von Stauffenberg the brilliant military man. The critic Pauline Kael, years ago, described a performance (by Demi Moore, I think?) as not so much acting but thoughtful pretending; I can think of no better way to describe Cruise's work here.

Look at what Branagh does in a single, wordless moment at the end of the film — there, in a nutshell, is what Cruise isn't. You can see Cruise trying to get there, but the effort shouldn't be visible.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com