Heil Hitler, already... (Valkyrie (DVD))

Member Name: bookguy

Product:	Valkyrie (DVD)
Date:	13/02/09 (170 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Looks great - some good performances by Brit actors

Disadvantages: ...but the whole thing is punctured by Cruise's accent and some obvious plotting.

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 only to adumbrate Rommel's character. It was with some interest, then, that I started to watch this film.

The movie starts with a rather clumsy moment where the rather noble German voice reading from the diary of Von Stauffenberg (the main conspiritor) segues into Tom Cruise's completely unalloyed Newark accent. The effect is jarring, and continues to distract throughout the movie, particularly as all of the other actors are the usual plummy British heavyweights that always play Nazis in this kind of film. I'm not saying that everyone playing a German in a war film has to speak like Herr Flick, but a consistency of accents would be more immersive.

Accent apart, Tom Cruise plays the part quite well, and there is some impressive CGI to get across his injuries, particularly when he gives a Nazi salute with his stump. This is a great moment, and there are isolated standout bits like this throughout the film, but not enough, sadly, to make this movie a classic. Of course, Singer and McQuarrie were somewhat hamstrung by the actual history, but I would have liked to see more intrigue and twisty plotting from the director of "The Usual Suspects". As it is, you can see the counter-traitors a mile off, and the villains are simple petty beaurocrats saving their own bacon.

I'm not an expert, but the film looks historically accurate (although it seems to me that much of the Nazi paraphernailia is rather fetishised - but maybe this is a nod to Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will"?)

The tension of the last forrty minutes or so does rather rely on viewers not knowing the history, so I go t a little bored as the coup was played out. Bill Nighy's twitchy Nazi was a treat during this bit, though, and a special mention has to go to Eddie Izzard and Kenneth Branagh, both of whom are criminally underused.

All in all a mixed bag - some good performances and tense moments, but the whole thing is a bit slow and plodding - and you just can't take Tom Cruise seriously as a Nazi control freak...or can you?

Summary: A so-so war film that could have been great with another lead.