Great, accurate film

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2012)

This was a totally engrossing political action thriller. We know what's going to happen, yet we remain on the edge of our seats as the events roll forward. This is because we feel like a fly on the wall witnessing a pivotal moment in history.
For the want of a nail the horseshoe was lost...and then the kingdom. The film does a great job conveying that feeling. We get glimpses into the plotter's motivations. No, not everyone is entirely pure and we wonder how come it had taken them so long to arrive at their positions; although, in the case of Colonel Staffenberg it's reasonably well explained.
The acting cast is great and they work together beautifully. No one tries upstage anyone else. The harping about the lack of German accents is plain confounding: Germans don't speak English with German accents; they speak German! I hardly noticed anyone's accent after a short while.
The movie aroused my curiosity about the depicted events and I wanted to see how accurate the film was. I realized that I had as definitive of an account as you can have close at hand: "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", by William Shirer. The film is exceedingly accurate while still adding color and aesthetics. Even some of smaller details, which I assumed were made up, were historically-based.
This is a very good, underrated film.