London, Dec 18 : American actor Tom Cruise's performance in `Valkyrie' got a rating from German film critics, who say that the actor can in no way act like the war hero Claus Schenk Count von Stauffenberg.

The critics were sure, even before the premiere of the movie that Cruise was not up to the job, and Berthold Schenk Count von Stauffenberg, eldest son of the resistance hero, had even told the actor to go back to America.

"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," Times Online quoted a critic from the Berlin daily Der Tages-spiegel, as saying.

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," he stated.

Besides him were other critics who had the same views about Cruise playing the role of the German officer.

"Cruise as Stauffenberg is about as deep as a bowl of cornflakes," Welt am Sonntag stated.

"If you look at the long list of his credits over the past 25 years, 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," Hanns-Georg Rodek, a Die Welt critic, said.

"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 wrote. (ANI)