A good examination on a bad management case.

Rating: 7/10 (8 August 2009)

Valkyrie is good in casting, scale, tension building, technical and historical details and a lot of other things. But, what caught my thought, which the movie intended to, was its perspectives.
There were a lot of "hit on Hitler" movies I saw in the past, all of which seemed to present purely in the heroic view of the main protagonist, and provided audiences with more sentimental bases for those brave men. Those movies were great hero movies, but wasn't as reflective as Valkyrie.
Valkyrie is a thriller told in many perspectives, none of which were melodramatic or overdone. The good thing about this presentation is that, we can evaluate the whole event as a management case. Using the basic management model taught in universities, we see there are a lot of holes in planning, organizing, leading and controlling of the operation. Basically, they needed to be more diligent to execute a plan as big as this. Tom Cruise gave a solid performance as the core manager Stauffenberg, who was a good soldier with a heart, but a bad assassin with too straight a mind. All the people involved in this high treason suffered from something similar. You just have to sigh for them that they could have gotten so many things more realistic. For instance, assassination on Hitler had to be double-checked, but wasn't. In order for the higher ranking officers and some certain army functions(telegraph centers) to take sides with them, they should at least have done more political works...... No need to mention the organization that kept falling apart.
I personally refused to accept the idea that it's some kind of providence that kept Hitler from being assassinated for 15 times. Maybe it's the movie Valkyrie that gave me some new ideas. Suddenly, it came to me that Stauffenberg and his staff was noble enough to be remembered in history, but not dirty or tactful enough to overthrow the Nazi government. It's 70 years later now. Are we seeing the big pictures so we won't make the mistake? I wonder.