What could have been...

Rating: 8/10 (6 February 2009)

Nazis are a recurring motif in Bryan Singer's filmography: his third feature, Apt Pupil, dealt with the sick relationship between a teenager and a former SS officer, while the villain in the X-Men franchise, Magneto, is famously driven by his hatred for humanity after his family was wiped out at Auschwitz. Is it that strange, then, that when a project emerged concerning a failed attempt on Adolf Hitler's life in 1944 (all based on real events), Singer faced plenty of obstacles (problems with German authorities, re-shoots, constant changes of the release date) to get it done? The result is perhaps his least accomplished picture to this day, but when he gets it right, he gets it very right.
One thing the movie makes very clear from the beginning is this: not all Germans were on Hitler's side, but usually those who didn't agree with his ideology kept it to themselves. When we first meet Colonel Von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise), he has already lost all faith in the Nazi dictatorship, and after losing his left eye, right hand and two fingers from the left during a military mission in Africa, he decides it's time to really do something. This leads him to joining forces with a group of disillusioned officers (Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Terence Stamp among them), who appoint him as the new leader of the conspiracy to kill Hitler (David Bamber). The plan they come up with is indeed very clever: using Hitler's own reserve army (the so-called Operation Valkyrie, hence the film's title), they will take over the control of Berlin and subsequently the rest of Germany once the Fuhrer has been blown to pieces. However, there's always a slight chance the operation might fail, and since not everyone at the Ministry of War (Tom Wilkinson's General Fromm, for example) shares their anti-Nazi mentality, they must be prepared to face the consequences, should anything go wrong.
The main strength displayed by Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (the Oscar-winning author of the director's breakthrough feature, The Usual Suspects) is their decision to make the movie a thriller, not a history lesson (apart from the accuracy of the production design and costumes): the narrative moves at a quick pace, the mood is the same as in classics like The Manchurian Candidate and the entire second half of the picture reeks of pure, unadulterated suspense. This is a strength, but also a weakness: the plot structure and Singer's direction have the surprising effect of making the story tremendously exciting despite the obvious outcome (although, as the director commented in an interview, everyone knew how Titanic was going to end, and that didn't stop it from earning an obscene amount of money), but this also leads to most of the characters being depicted as mere pawns in the game. In fact, apart from Stauffenberg, no one is given enough psychological back-story to explain why they're doing what they're doing.
And yet the characters are great fun to watch, and that's all due to Singer's trademark excellent eye for casting: the British group of supporting players (Wilkinson, Nighy, Branagh, Stamp, Tom Hollander and Kenneth Cranham) lend the picture the dramatic gravitas few American actors are able to give a period piece (even comedian Eddie Izzard keeps a straight face throughout proceedings), and Cruise, ostensibly chosen because of the resemblance between him and Stauffenberg, proves to be as solid a lead as ever and confirms, once again , that he's a better actor than most people give him credit for. Part of the actors' success lies also in Singer's vital decision to let everyone speak with their normal accents instead of trying to make them sound German, since he didn't want "realistic" to become "ridiculous" (and after seeing Mel Brooks' The Producers, it's hard to disagree). In fact, the only non-German cast-member who speaks with the "correct" accent is Bamber, a choice that is easily explained: it's another effective way to distance Hitler from his adversaries, since the actor's speech pattern gives the dictator an additional aura of monstrosity.
Valkyrie isn't a perfect film, that's a given, but it isn't as bad as the pre-release reports were keen to imply, either: it is in the hands of a very competent director, and what it lacks in detail it makes up for in pacing, tension and performances. Not bad for a picture a lot of people considered doomed while it was still in production.
7,5/10