Intense, but a lack of dimension in the characters.

Rating: Null/10 (31 December 2008)

Valkryie is a relatively intense thriller with an ending that we all know going into it, but that doesn't make it any less suspenseful. Well...maybe a little less suspenseful, but not significantly. The film has one fatal flaw though and that's it's complete lack of focus on it's characters. Bryan Singer made a decision to focus almost entirely on the attempted assassination on Hitler to the point where by the end we don't even know who these characters, aside from Stauffenberg, were that conspired to bring down Hitler. As far as I'm concerned, they were just a bunch of strangers in a room. The performances were good, giving each character a certain amount of presence, but after it all I still don't know who these men were. Tom Cruise definitely commanded the film with a driven performance that made him the high point of the picture, for me. And in the end, despite the lack of layers or exploration into the characters, the story still managed to be very suspenseful which made it fun to watch. And that ending was devastating.