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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Valkyrie

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#1 of 1 Posted 12/22/08 5:36 PM

From harveykarten Posts 798 Last Feb-7
To All [Msg # 23650.1 ]

VALKYRIE

MGM
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B+
Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written By: Christopher McQuarrie, Nathan Alexander
Cast: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Carice van Houten, Thomas Krestchmann, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard
Screened at: , NYC, 12/22/08
Opens: December 25, 2008

Should Claus von Stauffenberg be considered a hero because he led one of the fifteen attempts to assassinate Hitler? That depends on your system of ethics. One school believes that what counts in determining people’s ethics is their motivation. Why are they doing what they are doing? Another school believes that what counts is WHAT people choose to do regardless of their motives in doing so. Those who hold to the latter idea may consider actions heroic in that they serve a rightful purpose: to rid the world of a psychotic monstrosity. The former, though, asks: Did Stauffenberg engage in the assassination plot because he considered Hitler’s genocidal beliefs to be immoral—that such events as the Holocaust and the insane rush to conquer Europe and the Soviet Union are morally off the charts? Or, as is more likely (though not deeply probed by Bryan Singer’s film), did Stauffenberg and his followers commit themselves to the assassination plot only because Germany was losing the war?

What I took away from the film is that he man was doing the right thing but was not motivated particularly by the moral stench of a country’s trampling upon the sovereignty of other nations while employing death camps to wipe out an entire group of people merely for their religion. What’s more Stauffenberg failed: this is not by way of a spoiler since it’s well known that Hitler survived all fifteen attempts on his life, the only attempt that succeeded being his suicide as Soviet troops were marching on Berlin.

Nonetheless Germans today look on Stauffenberg as a man who showed the world that not all Germans were Nazis, that some indeed resisted the Fuhrer’s absolutism and unbounded hatred. In a script by Christopher McAurrie and Nathan Alexander, Bryan Singer (“The Usual Suspects,” “Apt Pupil”) overcomes the predictable, sad ending of the story by ratcheting up the suspense to such an extent that we wonder whether the plot to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944 will succeed. As photographed by Newton Thomas Sigel in locations standing for such contrasting scenes as the Tunisian desert, Hitler’s mountain retreat, and Germany’s capital city, “Valkyrie opens in the deserts of Tunisia where British planes continue to dog the German occupation forces. Stuaffenberg (Tom Cruise), descended from of long line of Teutonic aristocracy, is badly injured by a bomb, losing his left eye, his right hand, and three fingers of his left hand. He falls into a conspiracy that includes the half-hearted participation of General Friedrich Fromm (Tim Wilkinson), who is vaguely anti-Hitler but lets it be known that he will side with whatever group is winning: that of the plotters or that of those loyal to the Fuehrer. While their personal ambitions are not probed, we get the idea that if just one man, Hitler, were out of the way, a new government resulting from a coup would be able to negotiate a peace with the allied powers. (What is not mentioned at all is the theory held by some that Germany, siding with Britain and the U.S., could then attack the Soviet Union to strangle communism in that vast country).

Doubtless to the surprise of many in the audience, Tom Cruise, known largely by fun scenes such as those found in Roger Donaldson’s “Cocktail” and for comic-book heroism in movies like “Mission Impossible,” is brilliant as the aristocratic colonel intent on changing the course of European history. With a patch over his lost, left eye, albeit occasionally with the replacement by an apparently uncomfortable glass prosthetic, he convinces as a charismatic figure brash enough to counteract the warnings of some who outrank him and determined to be a key player despite the danger that his participation would place on his wife Nina (Carice van Houten) and five children.

With Nazi emblems trotted out en masse, including scores of flags on government buildings and on some three-engine Junker planes that look positively Orville Wright-ean compared to today’s F-18 fighter jets, Singer brings to life events transpiring in North Africa, the Berlin War Ministry, Wolf’s Lair, and Hitler’s Berghof quareters. Production designers Lily Kilvert and Patrick Lamb dust off the actual spots used to execute Stauffenberg by firing squad in a film that projects stellar performances particularly from Tom Wilkinson as the now-with-‘em, now-agin’-‘em general, Terence Stamp as General Ludwig Beck (who transforms himself into civilian clothes to show that he is at one with the German people), and Bill Nighy as Stauffenberg’s right-hand man, General Friedrich Olbricht.

Further information about Operation Valkyrie can be found in the Wikipedia, where we learn that the film accurately defines Valkyrie as a plan designed by Hitler to bring order to the country should he die—one which was turned against him as though by martial arts sensei to use the German Reserve Army to prevent a takeover of government by the S.S. upon the hoped-for death of Adolf Hitler.

Rated PG-13. 125 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

Edited 12/22/08 by harveykarten

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: Valkyrie

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