From Rastenburg to Hollywood

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2009)

A cheap historical reconstruction, trying to fill-up with insignificant details the serious flaws, and vulgarizing an important plot of the last century. Commercial, shallow and spectacular. One of the biggest failures is the over-blowing of von Stauffenberg, a mediocre officer with authority problems who, by a hazard game, came into the limelight for his moment of bungled glory. Here, we see him monstrously bigger than life, in the superficial performance of Cruise - otherwise, a very good actor, when he's used by a director capable to skillfully speculate his humor.
Still, the movie is interesting enough - mainly regarding the way it depicts the gregarious mass-psychology of the rats when the ship is sinking. The most important scenes are those regarding the labyrinthine interstices of the multiple conspiracies starting to overlap and collide, around the hypothesis of the Führer's demise. Extremely revealing for anyone concerned with the history's backstage. As a Romanian, I forcefully remembered the similar case of December 22, 1989, when many wings of the Securitate, K.G.B., C.I.A. and Free-Masonry were competing to take over the power, after Ceausescu had fled - everything leading to the "terrorist setup" staged by the Iliescu clique. History repeats itself - indeed it does!