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VALKYRIE Send This Review to a Friend
With the outcome known about the real-life failure of a major plot to kill Hitler during World War II, the new movie “Valkyrie,” starring Tom Cruise, must depend on working up suspense about how the plot is created and unfolds. The bases are well covered in the drama directed by Bryan Singer from a screenplay by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander. The result is reasonably suspenseful as a historical reminder, but strangely, it doesn’t make much of an emotional connection. Although the military officers depicted as the coup contingent were supposedly motivated by disgust at what the Nazis had brought upon Germany and the world, it is difficult to become emotionally enough churned up to root for them. And yet, had they succeeded, many lives might have been saved and the war might have ended earlier.
Cruise gives a solemn performance as ring-leader Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who assumes the task of planting a bomb, and his speaking English, as do the others, doesn’t detract from getting us to believe the story is taking place in Germany. The location filming also helps create authenticity. Von Stauffenberg is wounded in battle early on, losing an eye, a hand and several fingers on his other hand. From then on he wears an eye patch or an artificial eye. We are privy to various conspiratorial meetings as the plotters have a plan dubbed Valkyrie to be put in place for the seizing of power when Hitler is dead.
Von Stauffenberg has the task of planting a bomb under a table around which Hitler and his officers are meeting. His mistake is thinking Hitler has been killed. The detonation is a long way into the film, with lots of close-ups of briefcases and telephones to help build suspense before the deed is done. Then it is a matter of delineating how the plot backfires.
The film unfolds efficiently, and there is a good cast, including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Thomas Kretchmann, Eddie Izzard, Christian Berkel and Terence Stamp. Carice van Houten, so gorgeous and dynamic in “Black Book,” has a throw-away role as Von Stauffenberg’s wife, who has very few scenes.
“Valkyrie” certainly holds one’s attention, but it never rises to the powerful film it should be, given the importance of the story and the stakes. A Metro Goldwyn Mayer release.
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