Tom Cruise made an excellent sword-swishing American samurai. He even saved the Western world a few times – but he does not quite make the grade as a German war hero.

That was the first verdict of German film critics after the New York premiere of Valkyrie, the Hollywood version of one of the country’s most sensitive historical episodes: the unsuccessful military plot to kill Hitler in July 1944.

It marks the end of months of nail-biting tension among German cultural commentators and historians. Would Cruise make a hash of playing Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, the very model of a Good German?

Well, yes, according to Der Tages-spiegel, the Berlin daily.

Times Archive 1944 The Hitler plot

The prosecutor said: "The conspirators cannot expect to expiate their crime by having their life ended by a decent cartridge"

• Hitler loses two generals in bomb explosion

• The attempt on Hitler: Goebbels' version

Related Links

• Tom Cruise: 25 things you may or may not know

• Tom Cruise's film delayed again

• Cruise's Hitler film put back into bunker

“The only thing that can definitely be said about this cinema adventure is that Tom Cruise, who has been damaged by his bizarre talk-show behaviour, may well continue storming the heights of the Scientology hierarchy as a thetan, but his image as an actor has been finally ruined by Valkyrie,” said the paper’s critic.

Valkyrie, he concluded, would fail at the box office and miss out on the Oscars. “It doesn’t dare to be popcorn cinema and at the same time lacks any conceptual brilliance.”

It was always going to be difficult to please the Germans. There have been four previous German productions depicting Colonel Stauffenberg’s attempt to blow up Hitler by placing a briefcase bomb next to him during a military briefing; each has depicted Stauffenberg as a near-saint, the closest the country has to a modern military hero. He acted not only out of patriotism but also as a member of an aristocratic caste whose sense of honour had been upset by SS thuggery and the incompetence of Hitler.

The Germans were sure, even before the premiere, that Cruise was not up to the job. Berthold Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, eldest son of the resistance hero – Hitler had him shot – told Cruise to go back to America. Commentators doubted that a Scientologist could ever capture Stauffenberg’s spirituality. Welt am Sonntag reckoned: “Cruise as Stauffenberg is about as deep as a bowl of cornflakes.”

The first notices are a little more charitable. The film, runs the consensus, is not as bad as it could have been. But Cruise, well what could you expect from Top Gun? “If you look at the long list of his credits over the past 25 years,” said Hanns-Georg Rodek, the Die Welt critic, “then he comes over best as an American hero, someone who battles for respect with aggression and energy. But Stauffenberg was a German hero, with aristocratic bearing, and Cruise cannot carry that off.”

The British supporting cast of Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Tim Wilkinson – all of whom play stiff-backed Prussian officers – manage just fine.

“His Stauffenberg is honourable and serious and determined – but why the young count managed to draw so many people in his wake is not conveyed by Cruise,” Rodek writes. Cruise, quite simply, does not have what it takes to be a German aristo.

The film does not appear in Germany until January 20 and it may be that the public will take a more gentle view. Certainly the mass circulation Bildgave it a generous plug – ”A cinematic monument for a German hero” – and the Oscar-winning German director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck is an enthusiast. “It should be compulsory viewing for all German schoolchildren,” he said after the premiere, and there really is no greater praise in Germany than saying that something should be put on the national curriculum.

The film has been dogged by misfortune. Parts had to be reshot after they were damaged in the photo-lab. Politicians complained when Cruise wanted to use the Defence Ministry courtyard, where Stauffenberg was executed, as a film set. Eleven extras fell off a lorry and demanded millions in compensation. Perhaps that is what the critics meant when they said yesterday: “This film is Hollywood with the brakes on.”

Explore Film

• Film Reviews

• Trailers

• DVD

• London Film Festival

Editor's choice

• The 100 Best Films of the Decade
• 70 facts you didn't know about Marvel
• The 50 Biggest Movies Of 2010