Valkyrie (DVD)

Valkyrie is a 2008 thriller/historical movie directed by Bryan Singer, famed for X-men and The Usual Suspects. The British emsemble cast, made up of famous actors including Bill Nighy and Kenneth Brannagh, is led by Tom Cruise as Colonel von Stauffenberg, a disillusioned and disfigured German soldier in Hitler's army during WW2. The plot is a historically accurate (well, almost) account of the July 20, 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler, undertaken by a band of German soldiers and politicians. Valkyrie has the makings of a good movie, but i found it an unsatisfying and unentertaining piece of drama. The acting is impeccable and the cinematography is ...  Read the complete review

I have never liked Tom Cruise. And I'm not particularly referring to his Scientology babbles, or his various other publicity stunts -such as jumping on Oprah Winfrey's sofa- either. I just think he's an incredibly mediocre actor. When one has an opinion on a particular actor, it's only natural for them to have pre-conceptions on how the next movie will turn out. That's not to say I slate a film before I've even seen it (like some fanboys do); I maintain that I reserve my true judgement 'til I've seen the film in its entirety. The topic of World War II and Nazi Germany has been something that has interested since an early age, but my instincts beforehand told ...  Read the complete review

The other reviewers on here have given a very good summing up of the movie already, the main thrust being don't let Tom Cruise put you off, and they're right about that. I'm not going to repeat what has been said about the tension being real and the acting being tight, all of which is true. I'd rather say how I think the film could have been better. That's not to say it isn't a success because it is. All too often, Hollywood thinks a film's historical accuracy is in inverse proprtion to its watchability, but there's no dumbing down here. What I personally would have preferred from this dark movie is ... more darkness. Small groups gathered in dark rooms has ...  Read the complete review

I'm ashamed to say that I am relatively ignorant of much of the Second World War. I could tell you a lot about the involvement of the Foreign Legion in the African Desert and in Norway, and how they helped by doing their part, but if you wanted to quiz me on the action taking place in Germany, and any historical facts arising from Berlin, you'd find me scoring a bit fat '0' !!! As a result, watching Valkyrie was, for me, like watching something that I didn't know the outcome of. The film essentially depicts the true story of one of the 15 assassination attempts on Hitler's life throughout the 2nd World War, and while it is well documented in a multitude of ...  Read the complete review

Valkyrie is a war film about the final and most audacious of the fifteen or so plots to assassinate Hitler and end the war with the Allies. It concerns the attempts of a severely wounded (yet still young) veteran of the North African campaign to get close enough the paranoid Fuhrer in order to kill him. Interestingly, there have been few films, as far as I know, that deal with the many plots to kill Hitler. There's Man Hunt - Fritz Lang's master thriller, but it is completely fictional (based on "Rogue Male" - a book written before the war) and largely set in England, as I recall. It is also mentioned in passing in "The Desert Fox", but ...  Read the complete review