Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Tom Cruise, Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terrance Stamp
Time: 120 minutes (plus trailers)
Tom Cruise stars as a rogue Nazi officer involved in a secret plot to kill Hitler in Bryan Singers Valkyrie. Based on true events of the July 20th plot, the film follows Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise), a German officer disillusioned with the third Reich and the false promises of the Fuhrer. After an allied attack leaves him seriously wounded, he falls in with a group of high ranking officers who are planning a mutiny against Hitler’s government. Their plan is to use Hitler’s own contingency plan, known as Operation Valkyrie against him, by tricking the army into believing that the SS is staging a coup. Everything hinges on the assassination being successful, and, as history tells us, it was not. Regardless of this, Singer manages to create a tense and suspenseful thriller that will have you on the edge of your seat for most of the run time.
This production design of Valkyrie is incredible. Everything, from the buildings and aircrafts to the costumes to the stationary looks completely authentic (although admittedly I am no expert on Nazi history.) Singer, the director behind X-Men, Superman Returns and The Usual Suspects does a great job with the scene composition, and some of the shots in this film, such as the hundreds of swastika emblazoned flags outside the SS headquarters, are absolutely mesmerizing. Going in, I expected this film to be a brooding melodrama, but instead it plays almost like a heist movie, as the conspirators outline their plans in great detail. Each setback adds another layer of tension, and it is a testament to Singer’s skill as a director that despite all the history lessons, he has you believing that they might just pull it off. My only complaint of him is that I think this film would have worked far better in German. One of the opening scenes had English subtitles, and even in those brief moments, I could hear people all around me start to complain. People, it’s really not that hard to read. Then again, I do understand that from a marketing perspective the only profitable way to make the movie was to pander to mainstream audiences. Sigh.
Now, for Tom Cruise. It really is fashionable these days to make fun of Cruise (and boy does he provide people with plenty of opportunities.) Personally, I think he is a really good actor, especially when he reaches for something beyond his normal ‘all American’ roles, in films such as Collateral or Magnolia. So I went in Valkyrie doing my best to ignore all of the tabloid gossip and judge him solely on his acting. Despite this, I found it rather hard to separate him from the character that he played, especially in the first third of the film; I can’t decide whether I would have preferred him to do a German accent or not. However, as momentum picks up, so to does Cruise’ performance, and ultimately he was very convincing as a man who risks everything for the greater good. He is certainly helped along by a superb supporting cast made up of veteran British and German actors, including Kenneth Branagh (Rabbit Proof Fence), Bill Nighy (Shaun of the Dead), Tom Wilkinson (RocknRolla) and Christian Berkel (Downfall), all of whom are fantastic in their various roles.
I would really encourage people to give this film a chance, especially if they dismissed it as just another historical thriller to which we all know the end. I admit that I was secretly hoping that the filmmakers would completely throw fact out the window and make the assassination a success (which would have been the ballsiest decision in the history of Hollwood), but I suspect the studio might have had a problem with it. Even so, Valkyrie still manages to be a comprehensive, thrilling and satisfying trip to the cinema.
