a surprising Cruise snoozer, despite the big decibels...

Rating: 6/10 (19 December 2008)

After phonetically memorizing a handful of lines of opening dialog in Deutsch, Tom Cruise gets to Vulcan mind-meld with the audience in California English for the rest of the film. (To be fair, the whole ensemble's accented English was all over the map, literally, according to each actor's native tongue. This soon comes to have a net numbing effect on the audience.)
It seems they really permed Cruise's hair, too. (Somewhat vain that Cruise initially took such a strong interest in von Stauffenberg primarily because Cruise thought their faces, in profile, are similar. A victory of form over content or just one "method" borrowed from the Color of Money?)
The film fails to make it sufficiently clear that previous *suicide-assassination* attempts against Hitler had failed, and that von Stauffenberg was not only required (by sheer necessity) to be The One to bomb Hitler, von Stauffenberg was also the one main charismatic personality who had any chance of convincing/*conning* non-conspirator Wehrmacht commanders (who outranked him) to go along with the coup, *after* the bomb had gone off. This is presented with a few too many touches of Mission Impossible and Jerry McGuire rolled into one lump. (I overheard someone asking why a *truck bomb* wasn't used. I suppose there wasn't enough Mission Impossible for that one.)
The film raises plausible questions about how the attempted coup might have succeeded, if *all* of the conspirators had von Stauffenberg's relentless and steely resolve (and/or just a little more luck). Some artistic license is taken, but it mostly boils down to one too many chicken poops ruining von Stauffenberg's intricate broth. (Not everyone, who would be necessary for success, was sufficiently determined to stop Hitler at all costs.) The film argues that despite Hitler's surviving the assassination attempt, swift and decisive conspirator action, according to timetable, might have neutralized the Gestapo, SS, SD and Hitler's inner circle for the coup to have succeeded anyway. This is both plausible and debatable.
This film is not a complete disappointment (it strives to cleave closely to known historical fact, given that most of the principals were executed or committed suicide and hence could not write confessions, let alone memoirs), but it is not nearly as good as some others make it out to be. The supporting cast does a commendable job, but cannot fill the gaping holes at the core of the film. The director and producers are entirely at fault. My 6.4 out of 10 is rounded down to 6.
How entertaining would any *procedural* "caper" flick (like MI1-2-3) be, if everyone on the team nailed their marks and the gambit *fails* anyway? Well, in real life, this clockwork gets botched and all winds up for naught. There was some hint of political intrigue in the film, but zero "psychological" drama. More of either or both would have helped. Where The Curious Case of Benjamin Button didn't seem nearly as long as *three hours*, Valkyrie felt like it was much, much longer than its actual two.
It's always a very bad sign that a film has lost its audience, when several people are snoring more loudly than the surround-sound, shake-you-in-your-seat crescendos that are liberally sprinkled along the course of the story. Some of the sleepers didn't awaken even for these rumblesome moments.
My bet is that, this season, Defiance will be the more revealing and more moving WWII story "based on true events." (Far fewer people already know about the amazingly heroic, yet internally conflicted, Bielski otriad.) Defiance's success will not be a matter of accents.