Misses The Point

Rating: 5/10 (25 May 2015)

Valkyrie's account of the failed plot to kill Hitler is no more than a thriller that does not thrill. In theory, it is possible to tell a suspense story about a historical event with a known outcome. Although we know de Gaulle was never assassinated, Day of the Jackal pulls its audience along with the intricate details of how the fictional killer almost brings it off, and how the French security services thwart him at the last minute. It works as a howdunnit. But the story of the plot to kill Hitler is a whydunnit, and Valkyrie takes the why for granted.
Because the Nazis give us the luxury of both hindsight and moral certainty, they make us lazy. We know they are absolutely evil, and we know they are going to lose the war. So it is easy to take for granted that Stauffenberg and the other conspirators are making the right choice. They know the regime is evil, they know the war is lost, and they want to make a statement and maybe salvage something from the wreck. It's just what we would think in their place – or so we flatter ourselves.
But that reaction is superficial because we are not in their place but in our place, looking back at theirs. What Valkyrie should have done is taken the audience mentally into a world where the Nazis are the established, legitimate government and all good patriots want Germany to win the war, or at least to escape defeat. That takes more than swastika flags over every post office. It takes the creation through dialog of a social atmosphere in which Nazism is conventional and right. Without that baseline, the conspirators' decision to overthrow their own government and embrace defeat is trivial. How have these few men come to think that Hitler is evil and crazy when everyone else still follows him? What led them to choose what everyone around them thinks is wrong? Valkyrie doesn't tell us. Tom Cruise looks like pictures of Stauffenberg, but he conveys nothing of the man's inner life. Without that, Valkyrie has less point than Swing Kids.