VALKYRIE
FOX
RELEASED 23 January 2009
For a film delayed twice (‘Valkyrie’ had an original release date of Summer ‘08), rumours abounded that this movie was in trouble, which is often the case when release dates slip. With the maligned Tom Cruise starring and producing, much of ‘medialand’ would like nothing better than to see ‘the Cruisers’ star wane a little further. But I think the issue of how to market a film with Nazis as the main characters may well have been to blame here, because the end result is extremely satisfying and shows absolutely no evidence of production problems whatsoever.
Tom Cruise plays Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg, a German soldier who, after suffering injuries in a Tunisian desert campaign, is promoted high enough to become a member of Hitler’s war room meetings at his Wolf’s Lair base deep in the East Prussian forest. Set one year before the end of WWII, the German resistance, which includes many members of the German army, wish to remove Hitler from power and end the war. They recruit Von Stauffenberg to their cause, and a plot to blow up Hitler in his own war room is hatched.
Obviously it’s not giving anything away to say that the assassination plot fails, but ‘Valkyrie’ creates tension from the story that follows the attempt, as the conspirators put in motion the reserve army to take over control of Berlin, by accusing Hitler’s own forces of deposing him. This ‘Operation Valkyrie’ comes very close to succeeding but for the odd hesitation and stroke of bad luck. It almost gets comical for a moment as Goebbels issues a warrant for the arrest of Von Stauffenberg, and Von Stauffenberg issues a warrant for Goebbels’ arrest! The German army is the confused party in the middle. It has to also be said that the soundtrack (by editor/composer John Ottman) is very dramatic and heightens the tension enormously.
Directed by ‘The Usual Suspects’ and ‘Superman Returns’ Bryan Singer, this is an insightful, fast-paced thriller, one of those films ‘Hollywood used to make’. By that I mean it doesn’t have an explosion every five minutes or feature a slow-motion gunfight between Tom Cruise and Adolf Hitler, ending with the line ‘prepare to be exterminated, Adolf’! In fact, gunshots only ring out very briefly towards the end for a few seconds, otherwise this is a very talky film with some lovely production values and some great actors. There’s also a preference for real planes of the time and the actual locations where events took place, rather than a CGI recreation of Nazi Germany. Obviously it must have been problematic (the swastika is banned in Germany), so how they put a field of Nazi flags up I don’t know, but they managed it somehow. If the flags were computer-generated, you would never know.
The whole cast speak in their normal accent (only Hitler speaks with a German accent), so although it seems a bit strange at first for an American to be playing a German, it soon makes a lot more sense than putting funny German accents on (although ‘The Reader’ did this and I didn’t mind then). I think as long as a movie sticks to it’s guns, you’re entitled to go whichever way you like with the problematic issue of foreign language in an American movie. Most of the cast are English, so there’s a great line-up of British acting talent, including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Bernard Hill, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard (almost unrecognisable), and Terence Stamp. Cruise does his thing, and he does it very well.
‘Valkyrie’ is a fascinating, entertaining tale of courage in the most dangerous times. It’s revealing to see a film about Germans who weren’t happy with what was being committed in the proud name of Germany, and that the war could have ended earlier if this plan (or fourteen other failed assassination attempts I’ve since discovered) had succeeded.
FOUR OUT OF FIVE