An influential US critic blasted Tom Cruise's latest movie Valkyrie as "Nazi apologia" in the sharpest criticism yet of the WWII thriller.

The movie features the US superstar as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an aristocratic German who headed a group of top officers who hatched a plot to kill Hitler late in the war.

Roger Friedman, film critic for Fox News, said the movie appeared to intentionally minimise the impact of Nazism.

"I'm concerned that Valkyrie could represent a new trend in filmmaking: Nazi apologia. Not once in Valkyrie do any of the 'heroes' mention what's happening around them. Hitler has systemically killed millions," said Friedman.

" [color="Red"]Valkyrie opens the door to a dangerous new thought: that the Holocaust and all the other atrocities could be of secondary importance to the cause of German patriotism."

Friedman criticised the set designers for minimising or hiding the swastikas that have become symbols of the evils of Nazism, and blasted the portrayal of Hitler as a "doddering fool with a British accent and a nice suit".

Friedman's political criticism of the movie may have been the sharpest of US reviews, but it was far from the only negative assessment.

Writing in the Washington Post, Phillip Kennicott blasted the film's puzzling failure to portray von Stauffenberg's life before his unsuccessful assassination attempt - when he was untroubled by Nazism and served as Hitler's loyal soldier.

Kennicott also criticised the movie for failing to point out that the plot was hatched not out of moral objections to Nazism but only when Germany was facing imminent collapse.

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