Operation Walküre - Das Stauffenberg-Attentat

Claus von Stauffenberg, a man famous for being a German Army Officer who came closest to a assassinating Adolf Hitler. Von Stauffenberg is the closest figure Germany has to a national hero during World War 2. It's surprising that it took so long for a film to be made, nor to be a German film.

Valkyrie is a test project for the newly reformed United Artists under Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner. It was also a smaller project for Bryan Singer after doing 3 superhero films and reunite Singer and Christoper McQuarrie for the first time after the Usual Suspects.

Valkyrie starts with a prelogue sequence in North Africa. Von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) is a disaffected officer who is questioning Hitler's regime and that he was leading Germany to the path of destruction. During a British air raid he is injured badly, loosing an eye, his right hand and two fingers on his left hand. He can no longer serve on the front line. In 1943 General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) fails in his attempt to assassin Hitler and the German Resistance loss an army officer to help with operations. Von Stauffenberg is recruited in the resistance and the General Staff. He comes up with the Valkyrie plan which was to make the assassination of Hitler look like an SS plot, and get the army to launch a coup to 'protect' the Nazi regime. Von Stauffenberg is the only man who could get close to Hitler because he was the Chief-of-Staff for the Reserve Army General. The film is split into three major parts, the planning, the assassination attempt and the attempted coup.

Singer was able to bring in a very stylist approach of direction. I enjoy Singer's films and he was able to show his skills again. He is able to get an excellent cast, including Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Terrence Stamp and Tom Wilkingson to name a few. However, he shot the film in the style of a thriller, which was interesting, but being a historical film with most people knowing the outcome already takes away the suspense. But Singer did make an enjoyable film. The film has a strong script

Valkyrie is a strong, enjoyable film. It is not Singer's best but he can still pull it of.

This story is based on real incidents happened in Germany in 1944 during the Hitler regime of World War II. German Colonel Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) gets injured in a war at South Africa. He loses one eye, one palm and two fingers on the other hand. Stauffenberg feels that Hitler is doing more harm to Germany than any help. There is a group of officers who feel the same. He joins them and conspires and executes a plot to assassinate Hitler using Operation Valkyrie which holds key to the usage of reserved army in crisis.

WE KNOW THE CLIMAX: All of us knew that Hitler final end came through the act of suicide. Hence we knew in advance that he was not assassinated. And the entire movie runs on an attempt to assassinate Hitler. It requires tremendous narrative from the director if the audiences already knew the climax. Bryan Singer who directed the most fascinating 'The Usual Suspects' comes up with another riveting thriller drama in the form of 'Valkyrie'.

It is more fascinating because a part of German Army believes that Germany's reputation is going down because of Hitler. This film shows the humanistic soldiers who are under director command of Hitler. I loved the way Hitler is shown. The entire film is shot from the point of view of Stauffenberg. Hence Hitler is shown for a few seconds in the entire movie – that's too in flashes without revealing the entire body.

TAILPIECE: Valkyrie is a tautly made psychological thriller with interesting background and is based on real incidents involving Hitler's final months. This film has linear narration with no confusion.

First, I want to say that some time ago I learned to distrust critics and instead read the reviews here on IMDb. I've never been misled, even when an equal number of viewers liked and disliked the same movie because that let me know there was a matter of taste in play, and that's fine. Sometimes a movie pleases everyone, but that's so rare I cant really think of one. People have different tastes and that's good. But the value of IMDb reviews is that they are based on a genuine response to the movie - not a bias, or some other agenda.

For example, the Fox critic Roger Friedman listed this movie as one of the worst of 2008 - without having seen the movie. That's right. He rated it without seeing it. It was a classic and reprehensible case of bias and perhaps even bigotry since he was engaging in Tom Cruise bashing which is usually practiced in conjunction with dissing Tom's religion.

So I don't trust critics to tell the truth or give an unbiased review.

I saw Valkyrie and enjoyed it immensely. I've studied the Hitler period and was familiar with most of the events but the movie educated me while it thrilled and entertained me. It is a movie I was happy to take my teen-aged children to see because it also educated and entertained them. I thought the cast did a great job. The script was outstanding and the direction excellent. Tom Cruise gave a dimension to Von Stauffenberg that deepened my understanding of the events. The supporting cast were brilliant.

I highly recommend it.

PS. It's some time since I wrote this review and I took thirty minutes tonight to read the other reviews on this movie, not surprisingly they are mostly very positive and unanimous in praising it. Interestingly, the critics, including the one named above, who trashed the movie without even seeing it, obviously did so in an effort to kill it at the box office. While many other reviewers noted this too, I'd like to point out that those critics and possibly some of the people who 'dont like Tom Cruise because of his weird religion' are actually following the same path that made it possible for Hitler to kill off millions of Jews who also had a 'weird religion'. Considering the historical background of Valkyrie I find that quite ironical.

I'm not really a fan of Tom Cruise so I let this film go past me until it came to TV because I just thought it screamed "star vehicle" too loudly. In reality I was probably a bit too hasty with that call because Valkyrie is a solid little film that delivers an interesting story with the predictable Hollywood liberty but does so in a rather satisfying manner. Having decided to put my personal feelings on Cruise to one side, I did still think that the film would struggle because ultimately I already knew the ending (spoiler: the plot to assassinate Hitler isn't successful) and it would therefore not be able to hook me in. I think in a way this was correct but not really in the way that I thought.

In terms of just straight up narrative flow the film does engage; OK it maybe takes a while to establish the main players and get things moving forward but ultimately, while I knew they would fail, I was interested to see what happens, how it happens and what they did. On this level I enjoyed the film and although it was a full two hours long I wasn't bored by it and it felt like it was as long as it should have been. Where I thought it didn't quite pull it off is in the portrayal of why the conspirators felt they had to act. In this regard I didn't feel their desperation and I didn't get a tangible sense of how bad things were at this point in the war for Germany; I know from other films etc how bad things were but this film didn't really do that so much as simply say that things were bad. Likewise I didn't get a feel for the emotions behind the plot and instead I got the impression that the film was taking it as read that everyone dislikes Hitler and therefore that would be all the understanding we would need – this is perhaps partly true but the film needed this as part of it, not an external thing brought by modern audiences.

Singer does a really good job in terms of direction. There isn't a huge amount of action here but the tension is good and it is very well delivered to be a lot more effective than I thought it would be (again, the issue over knowing the ending). The cast is deep in quality but, like me, many will get stuck at Cruise. He does an OK job by which I mean he doesn't overplay or make it all about him the personality. The downside of this is that he doesn't bring much character out either and I didn't see much of a person in his character – he does have presence though, which helps a lot. The supporting cast is rich and their presence also helps the film since you cannot turn left or right without bumping into a quality British actor. Branagh, Nighy, Wilkinson, Stamp, Izzard, Hollander and so on – they all do solid work and are a boon to the film.

Valkyrie isn't a classic by any means but nor is it the ego-driven Cruise film I expected. Instead it is a solidly entertaining thriller based on fact that manages to engage even though you know the outcome. Cruise doesn't get in the way and the support cast make it stronger by their quality and their number.

I'm appalled at the way the specialized and not so specialized media attacked Tom Cruise for this movie. Why? He's not just good but very good in his against type performance. I've heard critics calling him "distractingly bad", how ridiculous and nasty. The film by the great craftsman Bryan Singer is a suspenseful, beautifully made historical thriller with a remarkable attention to detail. In an effort to be accurate the Jews are never mention because in fact the attempt to assassinate Hitler had nothing to do with that. The real reason? The war had turned against the Germans, it was clear that they were entering a down spiral and Hitler's madness was at the center of that. Regardless of the fact we know how the story ends, the movie manages to be a gripping tale based on real events. Well done Mr.Cruise, you won! Your Valkyrie is performing stupendously at the almighty box office.