REVIEW - Valkyrie

Finally, I got to see this film. I felt like it was never going to happen, after all the production problems, studio delays, negative press, Will Smith movies, general circumstances...it seemed like there was some kind of dark cloud hanging over the film. But the film is out now, finally, and I think I recommend it.

Let's get the Tom Cruise thing out of the way first. He is fine. He plays his typical heroic character. There is no Scientologist propaganda that I could detect. The accent thing was deftly handled. If you're not seeing this film because of Captain Xenu, you are doing yourself a disservice. His Claus von Stauffenburg, orchestrator of the final attempt of the German Resistance to kill Hitler, isn't the best work he's done since Magnolia or anything, but the man is solid and doesn't distract.

Valkyrie isn't so much a war movie as it is an old-fashioned caper film, with the slight adjustment that instead of figuring out how to rob a bank, etc., the protagonists need to figure out how to assassinate the dictator they work for. And when said dictator is as paranoid and unstable as Adolf Hitler, this becomes a bit more difficult. What is outlined in Valkyrie - what even those who might have learned about the July 20th Plot may not realize - was how close they came to staging a successful coup d'etat even without having blown the guy to bits.

Let's face it, Bryan Singer knows how to make a suspense film (The Usual Suspects), even one with Nazis and British character actors (Apt Pupil), and while it's true that I would keep him as far away from another Superman film as possible, Singer handles Valkyrie's ratcheting tension with a practiced precision. This is more impressive when taking into account the fact that we already know the film's outcome. It's not IF it happens (we know it happens), but HOW it all goes down that drives the narrative here.

As much as Tom Cruise is the main star of the film, Valkyrie is carried along by an excellent group of character actors, led by the always amazing Bill Nighy, who infuses his General Olbricht with that trademark lack of confidence he plays so well. The opportunistic General Fromm is played by Tom Wilkinson, just another in a ridiculously long line of awesome roles for him. General Zod himself, Terence Stamp, brings a quiet dignity to the role of General Beck. Kenneth Branagh is a bit underused as Major von Tresckow, and Eddie Izzard (no he doesn't wear a dress) shows up for a bit to do his part as Signal squad general Fellgiebel. Ian McNeice and Bernard Hill show up for a good ten seconds a piece. Thomas Kretschmann plays reserve colonel Remer with his typical understated menace, and Christian Berkel portrays Captain von Quirnheim, who shows up in the trailers so much because of his shiny bald head and glasses.

I bring up Kretschmann and Berkel because they also showed up in the German film Der Untertang (Downfall), about the final days in Hitler's bunker, based on eyewitness accounts. For anyone who has even the remotest interest in this sort of thing, I think it would be a great idea to check it out. It is a powerful film, but not exactly the feel-good comedy of the year, since there's lots of feeding cyanide capsules to kids and dogs and whatnot. (In German with English subtitles. Now available on DVD.)

Anyways, we were talking about Valkyrie, and the film succeeds at somehow managing to get you to root for Nazis, which is a pretty weird thing. 'But they're good Nazis, since they're trying to blow up Hitler,' the viewer justifies to himself. The motives of the characters in the film were certainly just and true, but one wonders about these guys in real life. Were their motives so pure, or did they just realize that the war was lost and they were trying to save their own necks? Some of the characters depicted in Valkyrie are historically known to have been vehemently anti-Nazi (particularly von Stauffenburg and most especially Tresckow), but others, well, not so much. We may never know the true motivations of every person in Valkyrie, but we can watch the film and cheer on the efforts of the characters as depicted, who all have the best of intentions. Hopefully, the film will inspire people to do some research and find out all the interesting things the film left out.

Whatever you think about the moral quandary this film may produce in your brain, at the end of the day it's difficult to disagree with the sentiment, "Let's blow up Hitler." That guy was a jerk.