Valkyrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy
Rating:  3 stars (out of 4)

During World War II, there were some twenty attempts to kill Hitler from inside Germany.  None were successful.  This movie tells the story of the closest attempt, by a group of high-ranking German army officers inside Hitler's bunker in "The Wolf's Den," in the summer of 1944, as German chances for success in the war were waning by the day.  Tom Cruise plays Colonel von Stauffenberg, a disillusioned officer critical of Hitler's overly aggressive handling of the war who is promoted quickly through the War Ministry after an explosion in North Africa left him without his right hand, his left eye, and three fingers on his left hand.  In this presumably factual account, von Stauffenberg plans for the attack on the Fuhrer and for the aftermath, in which the Army Reserve Corps, stationed in Berlin, would seize control of the capital and arrest the SS for attempting the overthrow, thereby giving control of the country to the generals and colonels who actually performed the coup.  It's a rather complicated plot but very well told, and the story itself is riveting enough to gloss over any deficiencies in script and acting that keep this film a little below the home run it could have been.  But it's a fascinating account and under the solid direction of Bryan Singer (X-Men, X2, The Usual Suspects), the tension continues to mount until the dramatic conclusion in which (spoiler alert!), they do not achieve the overthrow of the government as planned.

I read the largely negative USA Today review of the film a week ago and I believe it focused mostly on the performance of Cruise, whose leaden acting did not exactly work all that well in this film.  I agree that Cruise is the weakest part of the movie, but he was decent enough and his performance was certainly not so bad that it ruined my enjoyment of the film.  A who's who of brilliant British actors fill out the other major parts, playing generals and majors planning the murder.  Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, and the incomparable Tom Wilkinson all shine in their roles.  There isn't a lot of background as to any of their motivations for wanting to kill Hitler (even Cruise's motivations are not convincingly portrayed), but the movie's focus on the forward momentum of the plot itself and the difficulties in both getting close enough to deliver the fatal blow and managing the aftermath - when Himmler and Goebbels would try to seize control under just as ruthless circumstances - is more than enough to propel the action forward.  There is an appropriate seriousness of tone throughout (the packed theater I was at was completely silent even after the credits rolled) and though there isn't any insight given about the "other" side (those still loyal to Hitler, I mean), overall this is a compelling film that made me want to run to an encyclopedia to find out exactly how much of it is true. 

I don't typically enjoy watching war movies -- from any era --but this is not a war movie.  Beyond the opening sequence, everything takes place off the battlefield, for better or worse.  But Singer made the conscious decision to concentrate on the plot itself and not the thousands of tangents that a movie set inside Germany in 1944 could have ended up straying into, and I think for that reason, the film was successful.  I highly recommend it, despite a few flaws and Cruise's shaky acting, if only for the experience of a wonderful history lesson given its proper weight.  You won't laugh once, but you will think.  And you will marvel at why British actors pretending to be German seem so terribly superior at acting than American superstar Tom Cruise.

For anyone who's seen the film, here's a fascinating article in the Daily Mail detailing the real-life men portrayed as the seven main co-conspirators in the movie.  The movie is apparently pretty damn true.

Comments

[Oprah Winfrey]

Can't see any movies with Cruise. He's too much of a nutjob.

[Barry]

Cruise is too self-centered, even relative to other actors, to ever truly lose himself in a role. Keanu Reeves is another pretty average actor, but he seems like an okay guy. I agree with ... Oprah here that it's very unlikely I would pay good or even bad money to see anything with Cruise, who just said he wants to have 10 kids with Katie Holmes, who received almost uniformly bad reviews for the Arthur Miller show she was in.