Tom Cruise’s character in Valkyrie, Colonel Claus von Staffenberg, is only one of a few “good guys” to wear an eyepatch in films.

MGM / FRANK CONNOR

It’s one of the great putdowns in movie history: “Bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!”

That’s what Robert Duvall says to John Wayne’s eye-patch-wearing Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, when Wayne says he’s going to arrest Duvall and his gang.

The lesson, though, is never laugh at someone wearing an eye patch in a movie. Not only does Wayne handily dispatch Duvall and crew. He won a best actor Oscar for the performance and got a sequel out of it (Rooster Cogburn).

No one’s saying Tom Cruise is about to get nominated for his performance as Claus von Stauffenberg in Valkyrie, and actual events would seem to preclude a sequel. Even so, that bit of black cloth next to Cruise’s nose reminds us how striking a performer can look onscreen sporting the one-eyed look.

Is it just a coincidence that no fewer than three classic directors sported an eye patch: John Ford, Raoul Walsh, and Nicholas Ray?

Danny Glover’s character in Blindness takes the truth-in-advertising award for character names. He’s the Man with the Black Eye Patch.

Sometimes the character can be the Woman with the Black Eye Patch. Think of Daryl Hannah’s Elle Driver in the two Kill Bill movies or Angelina Jolie’s daredevil aviatrix in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Usually, though, the wearer is a male and that male a villain: Adolfo Celi’s H-bomb-hijacking Largo in Thunderball; Robert Wagner’s character, Number Two, in the Austin Powers movies; John Goodman’s Cyclopean Big Dan Teague in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It’s rare that you’ll find a hero with an eye patch, like Cruise’s von Stauffenberg or Laurence Olivier’s Lord Nelson in That Hamilton Woman. More often, the character is decidedly mixed: Wayne’s Cogburn, Brendan Gleeson’s Mad-Eye Moody in the Harry Potter films, John Heard’s Vietnam vet Alex Cutter in Cutter’s Way, Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken in Escape From New York and Escape From LA.

Then there are the movies whose characters could have benefited from that bit of black. If only Robin Williams had ditched the red nose! Eye Patch Adams, anyone?