Tuesday
23Dec2008
Movie Review - 'Valkyrie'
Tuesday, December 23, 2008 at 1:01AM | Valkyrie
Starring
Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Tom Wilkinson  |
There
were more than a dozen known attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler, we're told at
the end of
Valkyrie, and this is the last of them. And if
you think all it failed to do was work, consider not only what happens when it
doesn't but the steps the conspirators took before it.
Killing Hitler would have only been the first and very important step for German political and military men who were sick of Nazi rule. But dismantling the scourge of the 20th century would take cunning and precision throughout this bold effort to murder Hitler and either kill or somehow circumvent his lieutenants.
Valkyrie is, in almost equal measures, history lesson, costume drama, and action flick. The action flick works the best and most frequently, the costume drama looks the part, and the history lesson, which should be the strength of this film, feels a little pushed into the corner. It pops up when it needs to, filling gaps the costume drama and action flick can't. It's the epilogue about the multiple assassination attempts.
Director Bryan Singer gives us clues that it will be this way; his star, Tom Cruise, represents the action flick, while a tremendous assemblage of British talent - Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson, Terrence Stamp, Bill Nighy, and Eddie Izzard among them - give the film the depth something so daring truly needs. It is, admittedly, an odd mix, although Cruise's choice to keep an American accent in a movie filled with English accents doesn't work against him as much as you might think.
Oddly, though, what the film needs more of is those laudable British talents and less of its star, because Cruise is in every nearly scene of the film. Certainly, as Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of Operation Valkyrie, Cruise deserves to be on screen a lot. But there is plenty for the other characters to be doing while von Stauffenberg organizes the plot, which was carried out in June, 1944. The plan required so much coordination that there's no way one man could be on top of that many things and it seems a bit wasteful to have actors like Nighy and Branagh literally and figuratively following Tom Cruise around.
The story's fascinating, despite our awareness of how it will end. Spoiler alert: They didn't kill Hitler. If you didn't know that, don't blame me. Crack a book once in a while. Singer and writer Christopher McQuarrie have made an effective potboiler that stops short of being great.
It could have been outstanding, which means that unlike the real Operation Valkyrie, when this one misses its mark, the end result is not tragic. Far from it, in fact.
Reader Comments (4)
I've gone back and forth on this one. After all, until recently, I've considered myself a Tom Cruise fan and a Bryan Singer fan.
But the more I think about it, I keep thinking this:
"I loved Valkyrie the first time I saw it...when it was called Munich."
What a jolly movie to see on Christmas.
I enjoyed the movie, but I was hoping they would succeed in killing Hitler.
That would've been quite a twist ending.