The story survives some ordinary direction

Rating: 7/10 (5 October 2013)

The Stauffenberg plot was an attempt to assassinate Hitler, size power in Berlin, and end the war, and in 'Valkyrie' (which was the code name for the second part of the plan), a largely British cast (aided by Tom Cruise) attempt to tell the story. The scheme was well-planned, unlucky, and had it succeeded, many lives might have been saved. But Bryan Singer's movie suffers from some problems. Stauffenberg's heroic qualities are maximised (he's presented as the bravest, and furthest-sighted, member of the conspiracy, as if being the one who actually planted the bomb was not enough); and the complex motivation of German rebels against Hitler is simplified into anachronistic moral revulsion (which is not to say that the plotters didn't indeed think Hitler evil; but their view of the world was almost certainly a different one from the conventional contemporary judgement on the Nazis, which is how their thinking is represented here). There's some unimaginative direction as well: how many shots of a man in uniform throwing a cigarette butt on the ground does one movie need? Yet the natural power of the story is too great to be completely ruined by one director. These men were attempting to take a life, risking their own (with unknowable odds), and attempting to save millions. When the film ends with a quote from the German resistance memorial, it's hard not to be moved.