Valkyrie Movie Review

Valkyrie falls into a real no man's land for holiday pictures. It is neither artistically presumptuous enough to make a serious run at the Oscars, nor empty-headed enough to be considered true counter-programming. Instead, it settles for a sort of thinking-man's popcorn picture, detailing the failed 1944 assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in the ripping-yarn mode of historical filmmaking. The difficulty with such efforts, of course, is that the outcome is already known, meaning that the characters and details need to be sufficiently interesting to keep the audience involved. Director Bryan Singer knocks the latter out of the park, and has cast his film well enough to let the former slide past some decidedly dodgy points.

At the top of it all stands Tom Cruise, looking for a comeback which he likely won't find here, despite being extremely well suited to the part. He plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the chief architect of the assassination plot, who evinced a genius for military planning as well as a disgust for Hitler that only intensified following a North Africa debacle that left his hands mangled and one eye missing. Cruise portrays him as a man of icy certainty: aware of what he must do, cognizant of the consequences, and perfectly willing to pay the price regardless. He never raises his voice and he never second-guesses himself. Once a decision is made, he commits to the bitter end. That makes him the ideal man to take out the Führer, or so the German Resistance believes. Led by a group of civilian leaders and dissatisfied military officers, they hope to cut off the head of the Nazi party and seize control of the government before the Allies bring the whole thing down on top of them.

Stauffenberg's solution is a variant of one of Hitler's own plans--Operation Valkyrie, which allows for the German reserve forces to take Berlin in the event of an attempted coup. He and the Resistance simply need to pretend that the SS instigated said coup rather than themselves. They can plant a bomb in the Führer's bunker, claim his inner circle did it, and grab the reins before anyone knows what happened. It was a daring and audacious scheme, and Singer understands how to convey the details in uniquely cinematic terms. Valkyrie hits its stride with a plethora of unspoken moments: the hands of workers in a telegraph office slowly rising, the roof of a church removed by Allied bombs, the hypocrisy of Hitler's vegetarian meals, and the dripping scorn of Stauffenberg's Nazi salute delivered with a missing hand. While not always entirely accurate, it strives to present the facts clearly while making only modest adjustments for entertainment's sake.

Somewhat more problematic is Valkyrie's willingness to take motivation as a given. The conspirators all want Hitler gone, but they stand in positions which presumably benefited from the rise of the Nazis. Are they true patriots who recognize the Führer's evil? Or simply rats deserting a sinking ship? The screenplay posits such questions solely in terms of their impact on the conspiracy, limiting the audience's ability to relate to the plotters as people. A good cast helps matters--topped by Bill Nighy's Nervous Nellie version of Friedrich Olbricht--but beyond Stauffenberg himself, the insight into their mindset remains purely perfunctory. That stifles some of the natural suspense of the scenario and lets the foregone conclusion loom higher than it should.

Singer counters that with a highly polished technical production that permits the suspense to flourish in straightforward terms. Strange coincidences and odd bits of misfortune periodically flummox the conspirators, which Valkyriedraws out with an impressive amount of panache. This pays dividends when the coup goes forward and history literally hangs on one or two unremarkable men caught in the middle of it all. John Ottman strengthens Singer's hand further with a tension-filled score, coupled with some first-rate editing to keep the proceedings from dragging.

That doesn't necessarily make for high art, but then again, neither do a lot of would-be Oscar contenders this season.

Verdict: Valkyrie offers something to filmgoers weary of excessive pretense, but not quite desperate enough to watch Jim Carrey flop around on the ground. It engages without insulting the intelligence, and if it cuts a unnecessarily shallow draft, it still moves forward with plenty of drive. A more merciful release date might have benefited it more. As it is, it's likely doomed to relative obscurity: a fate it deserves no more than the bold, desperate men it portrays.

Rating: 3 & ½ Stars on 5