Cruise 'too small, too stiff' for role

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 says.

Ahead of the film's release in Germany on 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.

Cruise was due in Berlin this week to attend the gala premiere of Valkyrie before the movie opens in German cinemas.

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