An unfussy, adult and stoic Tom Cruise anchors the World War II thriller ” Valkyrie.” In a compact performance of nerve and rare glimpses of emotion, Cruise is a leading man who takes us through a complex story, and ennobles and personalizes events that have almost faded into history.
This Bryan Singer film is about the most famous attempt by Germans to kill the Führer who led the world into war and Germany into horror. And it is about the man at the center of that conspiracy, Claus von Stauffenberg. He was an army officer from German nobility, that rare man with the resolve, “tenacity and determination,” historian Roger Moorhouse says in his book “Killing Hitler,” to carry out an attempted coup to “save Germany.”
“Valkyrie” introduces the principals — civilians struggling to find a way to seize control of the government, from a military dictatorship, Wehrmacht officers appalled by the “stain” the mass murderer Hitler had brought to their army.
Category: Valkyrie
In “Valkyrie,” the latest Hollywood film to delve into Nazi Germany, the Jews are almost entirely absent. There is a brief mention of the concentration camps, and that’s about it. A moralist might find this an outrage, but a moviegoer, especially one exhausted by grim dramas about the Holocaust, may feel relief.
Based on a true story, “Valkyrie” aims to be a thriller, not an issues movie, and it succeeds. Tom Cruise, sporting an eyepatch and an aristocratic curl in his forelocks, plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an officer who discovers he’s not the only one with thoughts of eliminating Der Führer. With the backing of an expansive web of resisters – from typists to generals – Stauffenberg hatches a plan to take Germany by coup. Step one: Bring a briefcase full of explosives to a meeting with Hitler.
It’s probably no spoiler to say the plan doesn’t work. The fun, if that’s the right word, lies in seeing how tantalizingly close the dominoes come to falling in just the right way.
Thanks to crisp direction from Bryan Singer and a terse, efficient script from Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, “Valkyrie” recalls one of Shakespeare’s wonkier plays – say, “Richard II” – as the best-laid plans of high-placed men lead inevitably to disaster. And the impeccable supporting cast, particularly Tom Wilkinson as a careerist general who cleverly hedges his bets, breathes life into numerous small but important roles.
As Stauffenberg, Cruise makes for a good-looking martyr, but it’s the larger story that fascinates. Here is a parallel group of Nazis-within-the-Nazis, operating almost openly while others nervously turn a blind eye. “Valkyrie” includes no sermons about genocide or anti-Semitism; these resisters are concerned with the fate of the Fatherland. In that aspect, they’re underdogs worth rooting for.
BOTTOM LINE An engaging dramatization of one of history’s footnotes, with excellent performances from the supporting cast.
(Source: Newsday)
Tom “delivers”, is “convincing” and gives an “impressive performance.” “The picture is essentially a requiem for a lost cause.”
‘Valkyrie’: Desperate Measures, By Kurt Loder
Tom Cruise delivers.
Turning the true story of a 1944 attempt by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler into a movie presents one considerable problem: The attempt failed, and everybody knows it. Conversely, “The Day of the Jackal,” the 1973 film about an attempt to assassinate French president Charles DeGaulle, worked because the story was fiction — the movie was really a straightforward thriller that derived its tension from the cat-and-mouse interplay between a wily assassin and an intrepid police inspector. The German scenario, being rooted in real life, is less tidy. It involved a large cast of conspirators and a certain amount of muddling bureaucratic complexity. However, it also offers a real hero around which to construct a film — a handsome young colonel named Claus von Stauffenberg, who coordinated the assassination attempt and might have pulled it off had it not been for the intrusion of, well, real life.
Tom Cruise is probably not the first actor who would spring to most people’s minds in connection with this role. And yet it’s Cruise who has managed to get the movie made. And the surprise — for those who were expecting a train wreck — is how convincing he is. “Valkyrie,” directed with admirable restraint by Bryan Singer, is an exceedingly well-crafted movie, and an educational one, too. (It’s unusually faithful to the historical record.) And Cruise, somewhat encumbered as an actor by an eyepatch and an empty sleeve (Stauffenberg was maimed in combat in 1943), puts himself entirely at the service of the character — his trademark boyish grin is nowhere in evidence. It’s an impressive performance.
The film’s problem is inherent in the material. This is a movie about a confusingly numerous group of men with names like Fellgiebel, Goerdeler and von Haeften gathering in rooms to discuss secrets and strategies in an attempt to eliminate Hitler and invoke Operation Valkyrie — an emergency plan, sanctioned by Hitler himself, to allow an army element based in Berlin to take control of the civil government in case of a destabilizing enemy attack. The conspirators’ intention was to terminate Hitler with a bomb, seize control of all communications, arrest the Nazi political leaders and SS goons, and begin negotiating the terms of an acceptable surrender with the Allied forces that were pressing in on Germany from the West. If their plot failed, they purportedly hoped that its attempt would at least demonstrate to the world that not all Germans supported the odious regime. (Anti-Hitler plots had been festering in the high command of the German army for years.) The movie’s script, by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, is sleek and clearly constructed, but this is still a lot to take in.
The supporting cast is first-rate. Among the plotters are Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy and Kevin McNally; among their antagonists, Tom Wilkinson, Tom Hollander and — portraying Hitler as a fading old man — David Bamber. Cruise inserts himself comfortably among these British actors by use of a strictly neutral American delivery and carefully controlled deportment. And he brings some welcome warmth to the picture in conveying Stauffenberg’s quiet torment over the possibility of what his treasonous actions could mean for his wife and children. (If the conspiracy should fail, they will likely be executed along with him.)
Although there’s a combat scene at the beginning of the film and, unavoidably, a firing squad at its conclusion, “Valkyrie” is not an action movie (although it does build quite a bit of tension once the conspiracy gets underway). You can occasionally feel Singer trying to kick things along with acrobatic camera angles, but the picture is essentially a requiem for a lost cause. “I’m a soldier,” Cruise’s Stauffenberg says. “I serve my country. But this is not my country.”
(Source: MTV)
NEW YORK, Dec. 26 (UPI) — U.S. director Bryan Singer says he decided not to have the international cast of “Valkyrie” speak with German accents because it would be distracting.
The World War II-set movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler stars Hollywood actor Tom Cruise, Northern Irish star Kenneth Branagh and British thespians Eddie Izzard, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and Tom Wilkinson.
“We didn’t want that to be what the movie was about,” Singer told reporters in New York recently when asked why the German characters in his film didn’t speak with German accents.
“It’s a thriller,” Singer explained. “It should be exciting and the audience should be taken on a ride through the film. And the actors speak wonderfully the way they do in their current dialects and the characters are all supposed to be German any way. … We have an international cast — American actors, Dutch, German, British. To have everyone approximating German accents when, in reality, they’re supposed to be speaking German, which, I promise after the first 20 minutes, you’d be sick of it. It would ultimately sound silly. And it would distract from the drive of the plot. So, the decision was made pretty quickly.”
Singer said he had no doubt his actors could’ve adopted the German accent, if it was required.
“They could do it. (Cruise is) speaking German at the beginning of the movie, that’s Tom,” Singer said. “But, it would ultimately be not as fun for the audience.”
Another review on Valkyrie: Tom’s acting is called “good” and “top rate”, his “most mature work to date” and more, read the review! More phrases: “intense journey”, “impressively choreographic” direction, “thrilling to observe the quick-thinking team in action”, a “great thriller”. “We are glued to the screen unable to look away”, “terrific in supporting roles” but “Cruise is the standout. He’s outdone himself”. Read the review!
After all our collective Tom Cruise bashing, he’s turned the tables on us. And he ain’t kidding. He’s good.
His work in Valkyrie and the film itself are top rate. He is restrained and grimly Not Tom as Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg in his most mature work to date.
There are none of the histrionics and mugging sometimes associated with his work. It’s plain, straight forward and effective, a selfless performance.
Cruise says he was inspired to play the Nazi officer who led a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler when he noticed facial similarities in a portrait. Films have been launched on less than that.
Again script writers McQuarrie Alexander are praised for their “sharp script that creates a well-paced and engaging story”; the way Singer builds up the tension is applauded and is “drawing the viewer in and never letting go from that point on”. “Sometimes the cliche is true…it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. These man played the game brilliantly, and it’s nice to see them given a fitting tribute in cinema.”
“Valkyrie” is called “an absolute treat to watch”, “a succes”, “an intelligent, gripping thriller that is impossible to ignore from start to finish”, shortly, “a highly recommended film.” It scores an 8.5 which is ‘very good’ on their movie ranking.
Proof that failing to live up to the hype can be a very good thing indeed.
Of all the many true stories about World War II, one of the most personally fascinating is the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler. The plot was the last of fifteen attempts masterminded by Germans to assassinate their own leader, all of which, as any junior high school student could tell you, failed. Of all the plots, the July 20th plot was the one that got the closest to succeeding—and indeed, it very nearly did. Masterminded by members of the German Army and Military Intelligence Organization—including Generals Friedrich Olbricht and Ludwig Beck, Colonel Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim and Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg—the plot resulted in Hitler being wounded rather then killed by a mere set of circumstances. While the end result was disastrous for all involved, one has to wonder just what might have happened had a few twists of fate not intervened and Hitler died. The tale has been dramatized several times, including the 1990 television movie The Plot to Kill Hitler, several German films, and as a side story in 1967’s The Night of the Generals. Now, we have Valkyrie, from Tom Cruise’s United Artists studio. Featuring the reteaming of writer Christopher McQuarrie and Bryan Singer—the duo behind The Usual Suspects—and starring Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp and Tom Wilkinson, the film has suffered some bad press and negative buzz before it finally opened wide on Christmas day.
Cinema Blend also interviewed Chris McQuarrie, screenwriter for Valkyrie. Read the article here:
Christopher McQuarrie technically isn’t running United Artists alongside Tom Cruise, but he does seem to be a key element of rebuilding the venerated studio. He’s starting things off as the screenwriter for Valkyrie, and has two more projects lined up over there, with more surely to come. So even though McQuarrie won an Oscar in 1994 for writing The Usual Suspects, his best years may still be yet to come.
At the moment he’s making the rounds as what you might call a Nazi expert, answering press questions about how to write a screenplay about killing Hitler when everyone knows it didn’t work, not to mention the notion of making members of Hitler’s staff look sympathetic. During a press conference for Valkyrie last week he answered most of the questions lobbed at the panel, which also included his co-writer Nathan Alexander. We’ve excerpted a few of those questions and answers below. He’s a smart guy, so pay attention!
San Diego 6 interviewed Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer, watch the video here:
and also Kenneth Branagh and Terence Stamp, watch the video here:
Bryan Singer’s approach “takes your breath away” and “the movie reveals itself to be a taut, gripping procedural.” Tom “blends into an excellently cast ensemble; and he modulates his performance to the tense, low-boil rhythms of the storytelling”.
The idea of Tom Cruise wearing an eye patch and a Nazi costume sounds like someone’s idea of a bad Halloween party joke. But one of the many surprises of the new thriller “Valkyrie” is that it allows the actor, whose off-screen persona tends to overshadow his on-screen efforts, to disappear a bit inside the kind of old-fashioned theatrical get-up that Laurence Olivier might have exploited to the hilt.
Cruise doesn’t quite have the gravitas to pull off this very tricky part — a German officer during World War II who leads a plot to overthrow Hitler — but he also doesn’t try to hog the spotlight or oversell the audience on his charm, the way he has in a number of recent efforts, like “Tropic Thunder” and “Lions for Lambs.” He blends into an excellently cast ensemble; and he modulates his performance to the tense, low-boil rhythms of the storytelling.
The actor plays Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a real-life figure who was maimed and partly blinded in Tunisia in 1943. Upon his return to Germany, his disillusionment with Nazism became so pronounced that he joined forces with a number of members of the underground resistance — played here by the likes of Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh and Terence Stamp — to fashion an elaborate plot that will use Hitler’s reserve army to turn against the rest of the army and take control of Berlin.
The only wrinkle: In order for the plot to succeed, Hitler must be assassinated.
