• Wide Release
• Director: Bryan Singer
• Written by: Christopher McQuarrie, Nathan Alexander
• Running Time: 120 minutes
• Language: English
• MPAA Rating: PG-13 - Parents Strongly Cautioned
• Cast: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten, Thomas Kretschmann, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McNally, Tom Hollander, Andy Gatjen, Jamie Parker, David Bamber, David Schofield, Kenneth Cranham, Halina Reijn, Werner Daehn, Harvey Friedman, Matthias Schweighöfer, Waldemar Kobus, Florian Panzner

"Nothing always goes according to plan,” notes Terence Stamp’s character in the film, setting us up for the film’s guaranteed downbeat ending. Yes, you knew it going in. But we were so damn close you’ll tell yourself as you single file out of the theatre. Of course it failed, as even a middling knowledge of history dictated it would. Conspiracy theories aside, Hitler didn’t die on July 20, 1944 and the attempted coup (structured around Hitler’s own Valkyrie contingency plan) ultimately failed. In the aftermath, 700 arrests were made and 200 conspirators were executed. It doesn’t get much more downbeat than that, really. Thankfully the movies are there to remind us of what could have been – to let us live what should have been. For about two hours, we’re right there with them – setting the bomb, biting our nails, cursing under our breath and hoping against hope that everything goes according to plan, even when we know that it won’t. That’s why we (us, the real people, not the critics) love the movies.

After the invasion of Normandy, it was obvious to most German officers that things weren’t going well and that Hitler’s continued reign might not be in the best interests of the country. Insert Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), an ultra-nationalistic German colonel, shipped back to Berlin following serious injury in Tunisia (sadly, for him, his left his eye, his right hand and a couple of fingers on his left hand don’t get to make the trip with him – blown off by some allied planes and left in the desert). He doesn’t hide the contempt he feels for Hitler, something of which is deemed a treasonable offence in 1943 Germany, but you wouldn’t know it by the way he carries on. His candour brings him to the attention of some like-minded individuals who share in his brand of radical (read: lucid) patriotism. He is immediately recruited by Major General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh), General Friedrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy), General Erich Fellgiebel (Eddie Izzard) and the architect of the whole affair General Ludwig Beck (Terence Stamp), along with Dr. Carl Goerdeler (Kevin R. McNally) and his politically motivated civilian dissenters, to cultivate a plot to assassinate Hitler and carry out a major league coup --- one that would ultimately hand over the administrate of government to them without a single shot being fired.

It is the unyielding boys-club mechanics of the conspiracy (the assassination and the coup attempt, and its follies ‘Himmler isn’t in the room’) that really help to power the picture, often times at the expense of the characters involved, who come off as mere one-dimensional caricatures or, rather instruments in the Singer’s grand, Nazi-chic puppet show. We know that they (the conspirators) are on board, most times, but we don’t know why, aside from their broad shared jingoism. Maybe that’s the intent. Maybe we aren’t supposed to know what psychological thing is driving them. Are they opportunists fed up with their standing in the Luftwaffe’s political militaristic hierarchy? Are they idealistic patriots looking to better their country? Or are they simply “jumping off a sinking ship” as one person in the film suggests? What about their loved ones, and do they even know? Who knows? Most folks in the audience won’t care. It is the metamorphosis of the assassination plot and the coup attempt from planning stage to carry out phase that will keep them clenching their seat and chewing off their fingernails. Nothing else matters and they will forgive any lack of character profundity. Paid film critics won’t but I’m thinking real folks, the ones who actually work for their money, will.

"Valkyrie” is Bryan Singer’s fixed interpretation of an actual event that played out in 1944. His slick presentation is more lustrous suspense thriller than historical re-enactment, one with stridently idealistic comic-book-like characters (Cruise wears an eye-patch, Hitler has a dog that he pets ever so deviantly) carrying out mechanical tasks (in keeping with Nazism and Nazi culture as a whole) while endeavouring behind closed doors and under hushed breaths to disentangle their own ultra-luminous ultra-devious comic-book-cool plot. On the surface, their resolve is driven more by nationalistic fervour and a desire to win at all costs, than any kind of moral impasse they might have come to, something of which contradicts the heroic allure the film seems to want to afford them in the final frame. As with Singer’s “Apt Pupil”, this film also goes to great lengths to fetishize Nazism, from their stylishly chic peaked caps and jackboots to their snap salutes, this film seems to greatly revel in its time period, at least visually. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but I’ll leave that to the experts. “Valkyrie”, for me, is a slightly sketchy film that lives and breaths by its ability to build suspense when there really shouldn’t be any.  I knew the outcome going into it, yes, but I still found myself straining for them to succeed, and, for a few minutes, I actually wondered, “Did they actually kill Hilter?” Admit it, you did too. There’s something so bitter and prickly about this brand of tension doled out, more akin to trepidation than exhilaration. It’s fidgety to the nth degree. It’s hard to put your finger on it but you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see it. I loved it and I hated it, all at the same time.

Regarding Cruise, well, remember way back when he was kinda cool? You know, like back in the 80s and 90s when he was doing “Top Gun” and “Rain Man” and didn’t have aspersions to be some kind of speed-freak screaming action lead. Well, this is sort of a return to form for him, in that he’s not jumping around like he has a firecracker jammed up his ass screeching “show me the money” or some such shit. His work here is more reserved and subtle, much the way a Nazi officer of his stature might have behaved way back when. He’s a stuffed shirt stuck in stuffy rooms directed by a strict adherence to a doctrine he feels nothing but contempt for and a leader he would rather see dead. People (aka paid critics) have gone out of their way to crap on Cruise’s work in the film, but I’m not one of them but I’m also not getting paid. The specific scene where he cunningly exploits his own war injuries (namely his missing hand) in order to chip away at that trickle of compassion he senses in Hitler (David Bamber) in order to get him to sign an amended version of the Valkyrie document, is just fucking amazing. There’s so much cool shit going on in that scene; so much tension, seething anger and awkward inexorable admiration, and just all around odd awkward shit that I swear that it outweighs any other moment in the film, including the moment when the culmination of the assassination plot plays out at the bunker. Other performances to mention; Tom Wilkinson is a fully realized character, and more like you than you’d ever want to admit, as the general who works ambivalent while systematically playing both sides up the middle, waiting to see which one prevails. Kenneth Branagh, an actor who has rarely impressed me given his penchant for trying to appease pretentious asshole film critics by re-doing fucking Shakespeare time and time again, I have to admit, did win me over a bit here. The scene where he, as a Major General, sneaks a bomb onto Hitler’s plane and then must go into the lair of the beast in order to sneak it back out again when it doesn’t go off as planned, is a great way to kick start the film.

Overall, an entertaining time at the movies, which is all you could ask for.