3 reviews

Valkyrie suffers from a weak first act, but develops into a tense and ultimately affecting account of a plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

Getting over the first part is a struggle. The start is bitty, the accents distracting. The actors play Germans but keep their own accents, and if anything the Brits come out of it worse. Seasoned players such as Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh never lose their jarring Englishness, while the film covers large amounts of planning and strategy and is therefore heavy on dialogue. At times ‘Valkyrie’ seems reminiscent of the lengthy, wordy, ensemble cast war/espionage films of the 1960s – ‘A Bridge Too Far’ etc – perhaps explaining the casting of so many British stars. However being talented, British and a cinematic stalwart does not mean director, writer and editor can just leave you to it!

Luckily, when the central assassination plot lead by von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) gets underway, the film begins to warm up. The tension rises and the action gains much- needed forward momentum. Accent aside, Tom Cruise is really very good in his role, carrying the film with a passionate, sympathetic performance. Christian Berkel shines among the supporting cast, matching Cruise’s energy and presence. The cinematography and art direction are also beautifully realised.

An obvious omission is a strong sense of historical context. Attempting to avoid lengthy explanations (in a fictionalised account of true events), von Stauffenberg’s hatred of Hitler is explained in three neat lines at the start. However, failing to give a proper portrait of life in Hitler’s Germany makes it harder to identify with the protagonists. It is only at the end that the regime’s cruelty is shown and we are reminded that by escaping to die in his bunker when he chose, Hitler got off lightly.

Valkyrie is tense and moving but hampered by its opening. Worth seeing, but it could have been better.

Big Ass Lunar 11 Feb 2009

With Tom Cruise heading the cast I expected to find this period film difficult to watch and fulfilling all the typical cliches of a hollywood blockbuster 'based on a true story', with a cast of Brits bolted-on to lend some quasi historical credibility.

However, Tom Cruise was quite tolerable and didn't overplay the role leaving a film that was genuinely entertaining. It didn't become overly sentimental and the timing of the attempt on Hilter's life (in knowledge of the allied invasion) was reason enough to explain the motivation behind the coup.

The acting throughout was convincing, (though I felt Eddie Izzard was an unusual choice?) and whether or not the film is historically accurate became less important because the plot did not seem overly stretched.

The film did feel a bit tame in places and whilst the initial action scenes felt real you never really felt that Germany was truly in a state of bitter war, to which the only solution was the removal of Hitler!

Overall, the The film moved at an entertaining pace and provided a lot of suspense without dumbing down.

7 out of 10.

BAJ 6 Feb 2009

Avenging furies in military uniform; the Prussian grey uniform we automatically think of as the hated enemy. It makes for a wonderful starting point for a really bold piece of cinema. Sadly, that is not this film, for the known quantity of the stars prevents this exercise from being thrilling. When artists are impossible to efface, they should take a break, or increase their game.

We begin with Kenneth Branagh offering Tom Hollander a booby-trapped bottle of Cointreau and, this plot having failed (with a sticky-sweet follow-up scene in which Branagh has to recover the unexploded Cointreau from Hollander), the conspirators – Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy, David Schofield, Eddie Izzard, and a long suit of established British character actors – shift their hopes to Tom Cruise, an American spy in the German army, and a brief-case’s worth of explosive. Cruise decides to re-write a plan – Operation Walkure – to seize executive control of Germany in the event of the Fuhrer’s death. Cruise and the other British spies embedded in the German High Command will dupe the German and Polish actors who play the actual military in the German Reserve Army in Berlin in to leading a coup against the SS, when the British actor playing Hitler has been blown up. It’s an audacious plan, and the most exciting aspect of the film.

The SS hover menacingly. A vile sergeant at a gate signals his vileness by burning a mosquito from his hand with a cigarette. Blond young men regard the insurgent Brits with suspicion. An incredibly achieved and incredibly efficient and lethal military machine runs to order in the background. Yet another generic blond decides there’s something fishy about having Tom Cruise and Jamie Parker in the back of his jeep. He spots (a) that Jamie Parker is that dry-witted lad out of The History Boys and (b) that Jamie Parker is throwing redundant explosive and wire-cutters from the jeep as they leave the Wolf’s Lair, a bomb having just gone off. Another blond decides he doesn’t like the look of Tom Cruise and Jamie Parker and Bill Nighy poring over office work and official dispatches in Berlin. Lots of dark-haired conspirators work very hard to stage a coup, but the blonds are having none of it, and they betray Tom and Bill to Kenneth Cranham (now with a blond moustache in his maturity) and David Bamber (who, as Hitler, has grown an obligatory awful moustache, all tufty, shit brown, and stuck on at a funny angle). Tom Wilkinson who had played footsie with Team Brown decides he’ll opt for Team Blond and the coup collapses.

I’m sorry, but it was impossible to take this seriously, or to avoid the disruptive effect of the raft of familiar faces on display. That said, the sequences showing military combat or manoeuvres were chillingly good. The sound was excellent – planes buzzed dangerously overhead, and kettle drums told us that things were hotting up. The potential this film had was shown in the dynamic cinematography as the coup sashayed through Berlin to the SS headquarters where row on serried row of swastikas sleekly fluttered in the breeze.

Couldn’t the budget have been spent on a cast that could have acted this without it looking like a vanity project?

JCM 27 Jan 2009