Close but no cigar

PHOTO BY PHOTOS COURTESY OF MOVIEWEB.COM

VALKYRIE

Where is it playing?: Downtown Centre, Park, Stadium 10

What's it rated?: PG-13

What's it worth?: $$6.50 (Steve E. Miller)

What's it worth?: $$5.00 (Glen Starkey)

Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil, X-Men, X2) directs Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a national hero in Germany for his role in attempting to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1943. The film also stars Terrance Stamp, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, Tom Wilkinson, and Kenneth Branagh. (120 min.)

Glen I certainly can’t fault this film for not adhering to period detail. The vehicles, aircraft, uniforms, and sets—many in the actual Berlin locations that still exist—were pretty amazing in their accuracy. There are uniformly excellent performances from this veteran cast. The film does have one fatal flaw, however: Anyone with even a passing knowledge of World War II history already knows the ending. The assassination attempt failed, Hitler lived, only to commit suicide a year later. That’s not to say this isn’t an enjoyable film. It was tense throughout—deftly directed with some clever choices to distract viewers from the knowledge that all these “Germans” had American and British accents. The film opens with Stauffenberg’s German language voiceover as he writes in his journal. A translation appears on screen, but soon the voiceover changes to English even while we watch him writing in German. This little trick helps transition the audience into their usual non-subtitled comfort zone while still offering a suggestion of authenticity. Such small directorial choices elevate this film to Oscar-worthy status, but they do little to help the audience to sympathize with the “heroes” of the story, who could have killed Hitler easily if they’d been willing to sacrifice their own lives. The elaborate plot depicted in the film was bound to fail, draining much of the film’s excitement.

Steve It’s interesting that you bring up the voiceover change in the very beginning of the film because I too thought it was a nice touch to get the viewer to understand that the characters were really German and not English. The technique definitely was borrowed from the 13th Warrior, which has the absolute best example of a character learning a language so that the movie can change from subtitles to just plain English. Fair enough on the borrowing, though. I only bring it up because it was done so much better in one of my favorite films of all time. The one major aspect that attracted me to want to see the film in the first place was the previews, which seemed to show an excellent cast with excellent sets delving deeply into a story that seemed interesting even though the outcome was known. Why exactly this film was produced, I’m not sure, but I have to think that it was done so some of the less history savvy movie-going public would know that not all Germans were pro-Nazi, concentration camp lovers. With all the obvious being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the tenseness of the movie, which kept me on the edge of my seat, completely engrossed with the story. I think that Tom Cruise may be having a little renaissance with this film, a rebirth as a more interesting and serious actor who has lost some of his ‘Cruiseness’ that overwhelmed some, if not most, of his earlier films.

Glen You, like so many film fans, can’t get past Risky Business, Top Gun, Cocktail, and Days of Thunder when thinking of Cruise. I need only point to his last film, Tropic Thunder, and his amazing portrayal as Lev Grossman, to prove he’s a serious and talented actor. He was also amazing in Magnolia, Collateral, The Last Samurai, A Few Good Men, and on and on. He’s a terrific, underrated actor, and he’s once again embraced a role and made it his own. He even has a passing resemblance to the real Stauffenberg. But again, even though everything was “right” with this film, I still can’t get excited about the story because as far as I’m concerned, these guys were failures. Stauffenberg should have fired a bullet into Hitler’s head. He had the opportunity. Or he should have done what co-conspirator Major-General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh) did when he learned the plan had failed: use a hand grenade to blow himself (and Hitler, natch) sky high. Instead, we get this crazy plot—and I know it was accurate because I watch the History Channel—in which the reserve army is deployed under a ruse that the SS is attempting a coup d’état. Too many things could go wrong, and they do. As Ludwig Beck (Terrance Stamp) says, “Remember, this is a military operation, and in a military operation, nothing ever goes as planned.” It’s a well-fashioned film, historically accurate (mostly), about a small redeeming moment in the midst of a culture gone insane, and I can see why the story is important to the German people. It makes them believe that despite Nazi atrocities, there was still some sliver of humanity within the German people, but that sliver wasn’t enough. Period.

Steve My point about Cruise is the fact that in many of his past films, his persona is so iconic that it was difficult to think of him as the character he was playing because he really was just Tom Cruise. There are obvious exceptions, but I will not belabor the point—or insult you in the last issue of the year, because I now fear for my life since many of your friends and family members hate me. I want to live into 2009 because I want to see Underworld 3 and Gran Torino in the upcoming weeks. A tiny bit of redemption for Bryan Singer is in order, considering his yawnfest Superman Returns of 2006. It is rather striking that he could make a movie with a known outcome more interesting than a superhero movie. Hmm. Will Valkyrie go down in the annals of the greatest movies of all time? No, but at least it won’t be in the list of the worst movies of all time. ∆

Glen Starkey is a New Times staff writer and Steve E. Miller is New Times’ staff photographer. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com and semiller@newtimesslo.com.