Why the Nazis are NOT the bad guys... (SPOILERS)

Rating: 9/10 (20 February 2009)

... at least until the movie ends.
I've seen a lot of complaints about how Hitler was a rather sad looking old man who wasn't scary and would never hurt a fly, much less a Jew, and how the Nazis didn't seem like the bad guys - in fact they seemed almost sympathetic - according to some reviewers.
Well, after thinking about it a lot here's what I think is the rationale behind it. The movie tries to take us into this world where people are disappearing, arrested by the Gestapo, you hear wild rumors of Jews being executed but you don't actually see it. All you see are your brother officers and all you have is their word.
Finally when we hear Hitler's voice speaking to Remer, the gloves are off. We see the executions, we see the show trials, we hear Hitler's voice on the radio and we see that yea, the Nazis really are the bad guys.
The movie, to its credit, doesn't make up characters but it DOES conflate characters or change roles slightly to allow for maximum economy of characterization. Off the cuff I remember:
Goerdeler - conflated slightly with Gisevius and the part of the group which was idealistic, civilian and kind of anti-Stauffenberg
Pompous general - Supposed to be Wehrkreis III commander Joachim von Kortzfleisch but I guess they wanted to make him look more pompously over bearing and less sympathetic (and Ian McNeice is certainly one to make it work!) rather than being 'a simple soldier who'd rather be pulling weeds in his garden'.
Africa Korps general - probably supposed to be von Broich but he's given a generic name and killed off. He probably represents the prior efforts of the resistance to recruit the likes of Manstein and later Rommel. I think this might have been problematic as a lot of people apparently thought he WAS Rommel!
von Haeften - takes the roles of all the ADC's, Klausing, etc.
Mertz von Quirnheim - takes the roles of Stieff/Gersdorff in procuring and explaining the explosives as well as the role of Thiele in taking Fellgiebel's call.
Major Freyend and General Tresckow take the roles that their subordinates (Sgt.Vogler and von Schlabrendorff respectively) historically had - again for the sake of both economy of characters and making sure the lead characters are the ones who are active, rather than having a lot of active minor characters.
We hear references to Helmuth Stieff, Col.Linstow and General Bieler as well in the dialogue. It's really nice to think that the writers weren't just pulling names out of their rear ends as is the case in a lot of Hollywood historical epics.
There is some measure of dramatic license in the scenes but this is always done to concisely condense what would have taken at least 3 more characters an 1-2 more scenes to explain if the history was strictly adhered to.
The movie does suffer slightly from shallower characterization than a lot hoped for but this isn't because the actors acted poorly - to the contrary they did the best with what they got. Unfortunately, because of the demands of the genre, what they got sometimes wasn't enough to really give us a good glimpse of their characters.
As it was Witzleben seems virtually irrelevant, which is tragic as he has the hands down BEST end speech during the Volksgericht trials, Beck is reduced to the 'father figure' who Cruise's Stauffenberg is trying to please - a sort of conflation of Ludwig Beck and Stefan George perhaps! - but his role as Stauffenberg's PRECURSOR, the one who would have had his finger on the trigger or the one arming the bomb in 1938, is absent. Goerdeler is reduce to the role of hostile and idealistic opponent to the practical and decisive Stauffenberg and his role as one of the key founders of the Resistance, his opposition to the Nazis over the Mendelsohn statue and his complex nature and naiveté is likewise absent.
To its credit though, the movie does not pander. It uses its dialogue concisely, smartly and effectively. They look and sound like the officers we've read of in books. A lot of people in my experience really tend to respond on a purely emotional level to cinema. They need to have their pulse raising not because of what someone says or explains but because of what they see. A lot in this film is explained through dialogue, through exposition (though there are, fortunately, matching images particularly when discussing the bombing plans) and if you're not paying attention you won't make the connection.
I can appreciate how well the filmmakers did and how they really tried hard to be true to history even if it went AGAINST THE GRAIN of what so many people think the Nazis/German were because of learned stereotyping. But most people can't - they only see 'actors' behaving like they're in a script which "wasn't researched" where Cruise wears an eye-patch. To this younger generation raised on stereotypes and sweeping generalizations and MTV - where images carry so much power and are so ingrained into their consciousness that when they see the German WW2 uniform they immediately think "NAZI" (regardless of whether that uniform was Waffen SS or POSTAL WORKER - those Reich mailmen had IIRC a really sinister looking black uniform so much so that some of those poor sods were shot by vengeful Allied troops and partisans because they thought they were SS!) - they're just not going to get it. That is, IMHO, a problem if not a major "weakness" of the movie - you're gonna have to actually THINK, READ, RESEARCH, DO YOUR HOMEWORK to appreciate this movie.
Heaven forbid a movie forces us to actually use our heads.