Valkyrie
I’m sure for Tom Cruise and his cohorts, this wasn’t how things were to go. For them, I’m sure the Christmas release of “Valkyrie” meant big box-office, big acclaim, and a shot at Oscar gold. True, all the bad publicity and shifts in schedule didn’t help, but once trailers started hitting for this political thriller, a lot of the bad mojo went away, even if people in the business were still skeptical.
Well, as with the plan being laid out in Bryan Singer’s film, things don’t always go as we hoped. Mild reviews have killed its’ Oscar buzz, and other films have stolen the box-office glory (even though it’s playing considerably above pundits predictions). And the truth is, this ain’t a bad movie people. I wouldn’t say it’s Oscar material, but part of me thinks that somewhere along the way, Singer, Cruise, and writers Christopher McQuarrie (an Oscar winner for Singer’s “The Usual Suspects”) and Nathan Alexander realized that prestige might kill the fact that they had one Hell of a pot-boiler on their hands in the story of a 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler by country loyalists who wanted to wash their hands of his inhumane plans. Yes, it’s based on a true story (in all, 200 people were executed by the SS when things went South), but it’s more pulp faction than good history.
That’s an important way to go when the conclusion is already known to the audience. Singer’s less a prestige auteur than he is a slick craftsman with enough smarts to know how to mix provocation and entertainment into a juicy package, from early smaller works like “Suspects,” “Public Access” and the underrated “Apt Pupil” to his comic book adaptations of “X-Men” and even his flawed “Superman Returns.” Teaming back up with McQuarrie was a smart move for “Valyrie”; McQuarrie proved with “Suspects” that he could handle a labyrinthine suspense story which revolved around an ensemble of character, which is exactly what we get here when- in 1943- a group of careerists in Hitler’s army hatch a plot to kill Hitler and put into effect Operation Valkyrie, a contingency intended to maintain Hitler’s government if he were to be killed, but the conspirators- including recently-wounded Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise)- plan to use Valkyrie against de Führer to put a government in place that’ll make way for peace and save Europe from the ruin that was to come.
Of course, history shows that things didn’t go according to plan; the attempt was successful only in buying Stauffenberg and his fellow loyalists- including generals and colonels played by a who’s who of British greats (including Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, and Terrence Stamp, with Tom Wilkinson also superb as a general loyal to Hitler)- time to stage an audacious coup before Hitler was able to hit the airways, and thwart their attempts to say he was dead. Singer plays things out for maximum suspense (aided immeasurably by longtime composer/editor John Ottman and cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel’s gift for lighting with shadows) and the cast hits all the right notes to show the unease and fear of failure on each of the character’s faces as things begin to unfold. It’s rare that we’ve seen WWII and Nazi Germany from the inside, and while we only get verbal hits of Hitler’s atrocities in this film, where the film succeeds- as the conspirators hope for- is in showing that not everyone in Hitler’s army agreed blindly with his policies, and they took action to fight back, even if in the end, fate perhaps had another plan.
