A Decent Film, But Not Quite Up To The Hype

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2009)

Most of you already know the story - an attempt on Adolph Hitler's life during the final year of World War II. It's a historically-faithful film to what really happened, so that's a big plus. Most times, much of these "based on a true event" stories are mostly fiction. Not here....except for the accents. (All the Germans sound English or American.)
In a nutshell, the good news is the realism of the story and the nice photography and sets. You really feel you are in Nazi Germany in the 1940s. The bad news is that the story often gets a bit confusing and the supposed good-guy, "Col. Claus von Stuffenberg," played by Tom Cruise, sometimes is a little obnoxious. Maybe it's just Cruise. Man, I actually know some people who hate that actor so much they watched this film and rooted for Hitler!! Well, I won't go that far by any stretch, but I will say the movie is only so-so, a little disappointing in that the story was dragged on too long. Boy, those coming attractions were really misleading, making this look like an action-packed, super suspense film. Well, it had little action and the suspense was fair-at-best, especially since people know Hitler was never assassinated. The only suspense was finding out how this particular plot failed....and the filmmakers took forever in telling us.
For people with Blu-Ray players who want to know, "How does this look and sound?" It looks very good and sounds terrific. The colors are rich and most scenes are very sharp. A few are slightly soft but I think those were intentional. Overall, it's a pretty film with very little CGI. The sound was particularly impressive considering there was very little action. Most of it takes place in the beginning of the film. Most of the movie is talk, but you can hear voices out of all speakers and get terrific surround on odd things like a room full of typewriters clicking away. Overall, the audio was extremely impressive.
Overall, the movie is decent and worth seeing, but did live up to expectations.