This movie is a thrill ride of the Valkyries. It's a pretty good movie

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2013)

Valkyrie is a great movie that shows some ignorant Americans that not all German were evil Nazis whom goal was to conquer the world during WWII. A few of them, like these list of characters in the film, didn't like how Adolf Hitler was taking Germany into a downward path, and try to do something about it, even if the overcome wasn't in their favor. Valkyrie is a great movie about the last attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler prior to the end of World War II. The film depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country. Tom Cruise is pretty OK as the Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who channels his anger at Hitler's (David Bamber) atrocities and mismanagement of the war by joining a secret organization bent on killing the Führer. Tom Cruise is pretty much acting like Tom Cruise here. He does try to speak German in the first 2 minutes of the film, but the film quickly turn to English to stop him from further butchering of the German language. In no way, does Tom Cruise even accept a German accent. In truth, little of the actors did. Some of the non-German actors initially experimented with German accents, but director Brian Singer discarded the idea, instead instructing them to adopt neutral accents that o it wasn't distract from the story". Sorry, Brian, but it was a bit distracting. You never really get into the movie because of these inaccuracies. Listening to German officers & soldier speaking in British/American accents was unrealistic, you don't need to speak perfect German or even a strong German accent but when you have supposedly German officers/soldiers speaking in clear British/American accents, realism completely falls out the window. In the movie 1993's "Schindler's list" they spoke in English but at least in strong German accents so it didn't seem to fake, and look at how well that movie turned out, and how this movie didn't reach that success. I think a lot of criticize come from the fact, that at the time, Tom Cruise's personal life controversial was reaching a new high. Let me state that, I don't think anybody should hate this movie because Tom Cruise is an extreme scientologist. Him being a scientologist, have nothing to do with this film at all. Yes, scientology can seem like a cult following like the Nazis movement, but Tom Cruise is making a movie about not following a cult leader here. It was shocking to hear that the film makers had trouble finding German locations to film because of this. It didn't help that also portraying Nazism in Germany is also somewhat banned there. So to attack the movie just because of that fact that Tom belong to scientology is wrong, and stupid. As long as Tom Cruise does an OK performance, I will be happy to see any film from him. I hailed Cruise's professionalism. I just wish he did more to portray Stauffenberg. He still seem a bit off. My opinion, the role should had gone to Michael Fassbender. Another criticize from some critics is that it is predictable. History tells us the plot failed, of course, and Hitler killed himself months later. But that doesn't stop Cruise or director Bryan Singer from approaching the film as a thinking person's thriller, told from inside the conspirators' camp, where the outcome of their deeds were uncertain for several tense hours. It was create as if we were reliving history at the first time, we didn't know what happen to Adolf Hitler. Who knows, he could had die in the bomb accept and we wanted the heroes to success in their goal. The film made me invested in the characters. Sadly the experience falls short of any realism or authenticity to the point that some people find it dull and boring. I found it interesting at a point, but without the realistic German accent acting. It seem like a really stage play or something like that. I think the actors did a swell job. Some of them like supporting characters like Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbricht, Kenneth Branagh as Major General Henning von Tresckow and Tom Wilkinson as Colonel General Fredrich Fromm did amazing jobs standing out. While, Terence Stamp is awesome actor, his role as Colonel General Ludwig Beck is nearly forgettable until the end. I nearly forgot he was in the film. The production of the film went through hell with certain crew getting injury in an accident, and some of the film getting damage. While there is a number of historic accuracy, like historically, Stauffenberg first attempted to use his briefcase bomb at Berchtesgaden on July 15. It didn't hurt the film. What seems to be missed in the movie is Hitler's obsession with SS leader Himmler. It was Himmler that Code Valkyrie was directed against, because Himmler was the most likely candidate to assume power. Historians have not yet unraveled the linkage between Stauffenberg's preemptive activation of the Valkyrie plan and the dire threat that Himmler posed to Hitler during the war. The movie score and visuals were amazing. While the movie was finish early in 2008. The release date got confusing with United Artists changing the date to avoid playing during other big releases and didn't release the film until late 2008. It was a marketing nightmare. It got troubles in some towns in Germany due to its Nazi subject matter. In America, it came out with other related Nazi subject matters films such as 2008's the Reader and 2008's the Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It didn't help that it open on X-MAS, but at less it didn't flop. Overall: it was a good decent film. It did help renewed the topic of the German Resistance among the German populace. That's the most important thing.