Valkyrie: Movie Review (2009)

Directed by Bryan Singer, written by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, 120 minutes, rated PG-13.

The new Tom Cruise movie, “Valkyrie,” was kneecapped long before it goose stepped into theaters.

Even before it was seen by critics or the countless Internet gossip hounds who pose as critics, negative buzz based on Cruise’s private life, the controversial religion he practices, the mistakes he’s made publicly and has been trying to repair for years, and the questions surrounding the film’s shifting release date killed it. The movie opened in fourth place at the box office, hardly a showstopper for an actor who once ruled the cineplex.

And yet here’s the thing--“Valkyrie” is a slick, engrossing thriller, with Cruise acquitting himself in a buckled-down performance that’s more restrained than anything the actor has offered in recent memory.

Based on Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander’s script, the film stars Cruise as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the real-life German officer who joined others in World War II in a daring July 1944 plot to get close to Hitler (David Bamber) and blow him up.

Among those assisting Stauffenberg in that task were Gen. Friedrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy), Major Gen. Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh), and other officers played by Tom Wilkinson, Terrence Stamp and Eddie Izzard. Each actor is so solid in their underwritten roles, they lift the movie considerably, infusing their characters with more interest than they might have had otherwise.

Since anyone with a passing knowledge of history knows that Hitler ended his life by committing suicide, the amount of suspense Singer wrings from the failed plot to kill him is impressive.

He does so by relying on the suspense inherent in how everything went wrong. Those are the details many won’t know, and so Singer places his bets on them and builds upon them. He pays particular attention to how the plot was executed, how some on the inside questioned whether it could succeed, and also on the group’s tense efforts to alter Operation Valkyrie. If the desired changes were agreed upon by Hitler--and they had to be in order for them to go in effect--they would unleash Germany’s reserve army upon Berlin in ways that would assist the resistance in the wake of the Fuhrer’s death.

From this, the movie brews at a nice clip, with Cruise (who looks uncannily like the real Stauffenberg) carrying his share of the action amid a top-notch cast game to carry the rest of it.

Especially good is Wilkinson as Gen. Friedrich Fromm, who saw in this plot a way to advance himself or, if the plan collapsed, an unfortunate way to end his life. As such, he wavers on the sidelines, publicly pledging his allegiance to Hitler while waiting for his opportunity to either rise into a better position if the coup succeeded or, if it failed, to call out all those who tried to kill Hitler. By far, he’s the most nuanced character in a worthwhile movie further heightened by Newton Thomas Sigel’s sterling cinematography.

Grade: B+