Manages To Keep The Suspense Going Even If It Is Hollywood History

Rating: 7/10 (11 November 2012)

This is a very mixed bag of a film . Despite the numerous mentions of Tom Cruise spoiling the film this isn't the worst aspect and for the most part it's a very enjoyable Hollywood thriller and I emphasise the word thriller
It plays rather much like one of these classic film noir thrillers where a cop infiltrates the mob and you just know that his cover is going to get blown with very nasty consequences . In a film where the outcome is known it's difficult to keep suspense up but here director Bryan Singer and screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander keep the audiences on the edge of their seats . This starts relatively early in the film where General Von Tresckow gives away a case of brandy which disguises a bomb intended to kill Aldoph Hitler . When the bomb fails to explode he knows he will be linked to a failed assassination attempt so we're shown a series of scenes where retrieves the case not knowing if his plot has been discovered
And the film places emphasis on this type of consequence . All too often in documentaries this assassination attempt is mentioned but doesn't explain how the plotters managed to conceal the failed assassination attempt . Likewise when the July bomb plot is set up the film goes in to considerable detail what is to be down after Hitler is killed . It's not enough to kill Der Fuherer , all Nazi hierarchy and institutions must nuetralised . In effect it must be made to look like it was other elements of the Nazi party carried out the bombing on the Wolf's Liar and Von Stauffenberg and his colleagues want to cleanse Germany of the Nazi despots who are dragging Germany in to Armageddon . It's this aspect that works very well
Where the film fails at - and it is a very big failure - is the motives for doing so where the curse of Hollywood history strikes again. Everyone can agree that the " good Germans " wanted to be rid of Hitler and paid for this by their lives but as is often misinterpreted by history their motives weren't exactly the most noble . The conspirators knew Britain and America would never accept a negotiated peace deal with the Nazis in power and that the Soviet Union would never accept anything than the total annihilation of Germany Nazi or otherwise . When characters in the film mention making peace with the allies what they really mean is " making peace with the Western democracies " as in Britain and America leaving their toe holds in France and Italy and cessation of airlight bombing by the USAAF and night time bombing by the RAF so that Germany could continue its war in the East where millions upon millions of Slavs had died at the hands of the Germans . It should also be remembered of these millions a large proportion were by Germans who were not Nazis . The ordinary Wehrmacht could be just as brutal towards the inhabitants of Poland and the USSR as the Nazi death squads
At the end of the day brave men with the courage of their convictions paid the ultimate price for their courage . As VALKYRIE points out many of them didn't die a quick clean death either , being slowly strangled by piano wire is an unpleasant death and history should never forget these men who tried to kill history's most brutal tyrant . But at the same time history shouldn't forget the motives for doing so which aren't as black and white as the ones shown here