As is the case in most of the rest of real life (notwithstanding taxes and death), there are no absolutes of pure black and pure white in wartime. While many people (and especially Hollywood movies) like to portray it that way, with the good guys battling the bad ones, I'd bet a fortune that there's never been a war in the history of the world where everyone on one side falls into one category, and the rest one-hundred percent in the other.
Instead, there are bad people and atrocities committed by those on the side of good, and acts of compassion and trying to do the right thing while caught up in the wrong cause. The thing is, the winning side doesn't want anyone to know about its bad seeds, while at the same time having no desire for the enemy to be viewed as anything but a collective body of just that. That's especially true during any such conflict, but with the passage of time, sometimes those little known tales (at least outside of historian and war-buff circles) finally get to the see the light of day.
That's exactly the case for Col. Claus von Stauffenberg now that sixty-four years have passed since his attempt to remove Adolf Hitler from power and thus end the SS's reign of terror. That story's now been brought to the big screen -- after many much ballyhooed delays and rumors about various aspects of its production -- in the form of "Valkyrie," named after the operation nickname that turned out to be the last of many attempts to kill the fuehrer over the years.
The film's biggest problem -- at least for those who paid attention back in history class or who were alive during those tumultuous times -- is that most of us know going in that the assassination plot isn't successful, mainly because it's common knowledge that Hitler committed suicide in his bunker in the spring of 1945, ten months after said plot. Accordingly, the biggest challenge for director Bryan Singer and his duo of scribes, Christopher McQuarrie (his writing partner on "The Usual Suspects") & Nathan Alexander, is how they're going to keep our interest when the outcome is already predetermined.
Faced with similar quandaries, most filmmakers try to make the journey getting there as compelling and captivating as possible, and/or really get viewers to care about the involved characters and their quest that if clearly not successful, might be bittersweet or somehow otherwise moving to some degree.
For some viewers, the latter will also be a tall task, what with the seemingly miscast Tom Cruise in the lead role. From the reports of Scientology issues about shooting in Germany and all of the bad press (jumping on Oprah's couch, bashing both Matt Lauer and Brooke Shields, etc.), to the trailer with the decidedly American star speaking without a hint of a German accent, the film's been beset with criticism long before its release, most of it squarely aimed at the 46-year-old's broad shoulders.
While the guy can obviously act (see "Magnolia, "Born on the Fourth of July" and, for a decidedly offbeat change of pace, "Tropic Thunder"), he wouldn't be most people's first choice (or even in the top ten) to play a German WWII officer who tries to kill Hitler (unless this is some sort of time traveling "Mission Impossible" installment).
Taking all of that into consideration, Cruise is okay in the role, speaking what -- to this untrained ear -- sounds like pitch-perfect German in the opening scene (as voice-over narration spelling out his objections to Hitler and the Nazi party). Taking a cue from "The Hunt for Red October," it then segues over into English, sans any semblance of accent. Why the latter was dropped is only something the filmmakers can address -- perhaps they didn't want the film teetering on the brink of coming off sounding like "Hogan's Heroes."
Of course, the film isn't entirely Cruise's to support or crash and burn, as he's really just one of many characters (played by the likes of Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh, Thomas Kretschman and the suddenly popular once again Terrence Stamp, among others) that populate the story. In fact, and while the number represented on screen is just a fraction of those participating in the real event, some viewers might find there are too many characters and related connections to the main plot to keep track of.
That's true to a degree, but mainly in that so many bodies means almost none of them get any sort of in-depth examination. In other words, we barely know what makes most of them tick, and while we understand their collective motivation regarding the agenda at hand, many are just interchangeable pawns.
All of that said and taking the foregone conclusion into account, Singer and company manage to make the film fairly easy to watch (even with the director's fascination with but overuse of downward looking aerial shots), and deliver some decent action sequences and related suspense in the process. Heck, any film that manages to squeeze in Wagner's "Die Walküre" gets points in my book (even if the similar war-related use here isn't anywhere as stirring as occurred in "Apocalypse Now").
More gripping than I expected and decently fleshing out and explaining a historical moment that most viewers likely have little to no knowledge about, "Valkyrie" manages to rise above its real and rumored problems and become a decently conceived and executed dramatic thriller. It rates as a 6 out of 10.
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