‘Valkyrie’ is called “the biggest surprise of the season” in this review. “It’s a history lesson, but told with passion, style and action. And with so many holiday films proving to be such a downer, the strong message conveyed in this film is surprisingly positive and serves as a nice parable of the current world (and politics) we live in.” Read the review here:
The X-Men director Bryan Singer and Tom Cruise team up for great new thriller that surprises at every turn
The assassination of Adolf Hitler during World War II is the crux of Valkyrie, a real-life tale transformed into a crackerjack thriller under the helm of Bryan Singer and his The Usual Suspects cohort Christopher McQuarrie (who co-writes here with Nathan Alexander).
There’s fine attention paid to detail as the story slowly unravels showcasing several German officers plotting to get rid of Hitler and then stage an expertly planned coup to eliminate his cronies and their philosophies from continuing to be in power.
Spearheading the operation is Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) whose loyalties for Nazi Germany was fading on the battlefield, which ultimately took his hand, eye and dignity.
He has a pretty smart plan of how to take Hitler’s own contingency plan “Project Valkyrie†and use it against him – which results in some excellent suspense set pieces and taut pacing.
What could have been a muddied exercise in convoluted thriller plotting, turns into a very streamlined and sleek film. It doesn’t mess around much with too much characterization, not does it go further than face-value politics which makes the story easy for anyone to grasp.
The acting is top notch with Cruise giving a solid performance as Von Stauffenberg. The supporting cast is just as game with Nighy and Wilkinson in particular standing out.
The only flaw in the overall film is the cheat of having all the actors talking in their native language and not with a German accent. The film tries to cheat it from the beginning of the movie, but it’s not a good enough excuse and actually detracts from the earlier part of the film. I can understand trying to keep the movie simple – and Cruise running around with a German accent probably would not have been the best thing in the world for the film’s marketibility – but this being a story about Germany, it does harm the film in unintentional ways.
Thankfully, the thriller aspects take centerstage and soon make you forget about this small little gripe. I’m sure it won’t bother most people, but cinephiles will likely find this to be the biggest complaint of an otherwise great little movie.
Singer as director continues to get better and better. While Usual Suspectswas his big break, he shows his skills getting sharper with each subsequent film and he’s becoming a master at integrating sound effects and sound design to amplify certain emotions and feelings – while never making it feel showy.
His work on the first two X-Men movies and Superman returns has also showed him how to utilize visual effects in subtle ways too. This not being a special effects extravaganza, all the digital trickery has to be very carefully integrated so it doesn’t take you out of the film – and it’s those strategically placed CGI-moments that adds an even larger layer to an already solid film.
While I was a little unsure of what to expect from Valkyrie, having seen it, it’s now safe to say that it’s the biggest surprise of the season. It’s a history lesson, but told with passion, style and action. And with so many holiday films proving to be such a downer, the strong message conveyed in this film is surprisingly positive and serves as a nice parable of the current world (and politics) we live in.
(Source: iF Magazine)
