Sharp, Crisp and Entertaining

Rating: 9/10 (23 February 2009)

Saw the movie yesterday and these are my first thoughts. Good acting all throughout and for once, a movie focused on a very different aspect of the Third Reich. That not everyone in the German ranks approved of Hitler, and wanted to do something about him so the world would view Germany differently.
This premise of the movie is believable. And what followed was an exciting story. Which says a lot about the movie because we know what happens in the end: but the movie still manages to create a sense of excitement, even giving audiences an admittedly false sense of triumph that maybe the good guys actually succeeded. For me it is this sense of thrill and optimism portrayed in the movie that makes it one of the better ones I've seen in a while.
And while the individual performances were OK-good, it's Bryan Singer's movie. One can see some of the elements of The Usual Suspects. I repeat again, while TUS was an out and out thriller with one of the best climaxes ever, this movie's ending was always known. I do believe that adding a clever twit in the end isn't THAT difficult (no offense to TUS) but to create a drama when the whole world knows what happened in the end needs master direction, and that's exactly what Singer did.
I'll be watching it again, and maybe I'll find some revealing mistakes, some scenes that don't quite add up. But it seemed like a really good movie to me the first time, and since once is about as many times I watch most movies, I'll remember this one.