Tom Cruise is playing a Nazi in his new film

[Richard.John]

Anyone seen the trailer for this? When they mention from the director of....blah blah blah.... you know it's not a good sign. And they really should have forced the leads to use German accented English. Just seems silly otherwise.

[Darwock]

Fere are your peppers? I cannot let you sroo vithout peppers. You must see za collonell at vunce!

[Richard.John]

His problem is that he is always Tom Cruise the movie star in films and it's hard I feel to shake that off, and he doesn't help to either.

[Square]

As much as I think TC is a bit of a knob in real-life, I can't remember him being really BAD in any movie. I'm sure you lot will remind me though.

Magnolia was a career best performance from him IMO.

[noobish hat]

What's the point? He's hardly gonna beat Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List. Or at anything.

[Darwock]

I just saw this tonight - truly, truly amazing movie... and if Tom Cruise being in it ensures that more people go and see it then all the better (I can't personally see any other reason for casting him but it worked).

Didn't know it was a Bryan Singer movie either, he's gone way up in my estimation even though I loved his superhero movies.

Schindler's List was too schmaltzy for me, this was a far better 'hollywood' account of history IMO, only the execution of Stauffenberg was a little bit Braveheart-esque.

[Baseley09]

I enjoyed this one too, although for a while it seemed like it could've been a BBC drama rather than a hollywood blockbuster, it did eventually grab me and was quite well done.

I went as Stauffenberg to a WW2 party last weekend hah!

[Darwock]

It was interesting seeing this in an almost empty Japanese cinema (on a Friday night on the week of release) - based on the Hitler action figures/plastic models customised with Nazi regalia you can see in shops I don't think Japan has the same sense of shame regarding WW2, although they are not lacking in interest. I subsequently found out my girlfriend knows next to nothing about the impact of WW2 on Europe - in her words "I thought Britain and America went to Germany to fight Hitler because he was too independent"

So it was a great educational and entertaining experience!

[noobish hat]

I too can vouch for the ignorance of East Asians on the history of world war two in Europe.

[abigsmurf]

Most people in the West don't hold a great deal of shame over the bombing campaign against civilian targets in Germany or the Firebombing of Tokyo either yet they were atrocities too.

Also the vast majority of the population of the UK know little on the history WW2 in Africa or Australia. Heck most people here only know about the beginning and end of the war in the pacific and not what happened in between.

[noobish hat]

I don't hold any shame over any bombing campaign against japan, no.

[Dogg Thang]

What the West should have shame about is giving some of the Japanese a free pass after WW2 in return for Unit 731 research, one of the most digusting things from that time, though only one of many when it comes to Japan in that era.

And possibly the West should feel shame for not going to war with Stalin.

But there were atrocities all round. It was, in no shape or form, a good war.


Oh, and back on topic, I haven't seen this but have been interested. If anything, Tom Cruise was a turn-off. So it's worth a watch then?

[abigsmurf]

Indeed, but there's far too little emphasis on atrocities the allies committed and they're not taught in school. 600,000 German Civilians intentionally killed in Arthur Bomber Harris' campaign, 100,000 civilians died a horribly painful death in the firebombing of Tokyo. It's incredibly rare for anyone to get taught about these in school.

All sides committed atrocities in WW2, it's just the west as a whole seem to like to pretend that we won WW2 with a clean conscience.

[noobish hat]

Whatever we did, we did it to win a just war. We didn't do it for fun, like the japs did.

[sj33]

They hardly did it for fun. A warped ideology held by a miniority Imperialist, millitarianist elite, sure, but hardly for kicks.