Valkyrie is a 2008 drama about an assassination and political coup plot by desperate renegade German Army officers against Adolf Hitler during World War II.
No doubt, you get mixed up in a historical biography, especially on the scale of WWII with big names like Hitler thrown in the soup, there’s bound to be all kinds of quicksand under your feet in terms of getting the story right and pleasing critics and experts. Just the idea of committing to such a thing is almost commendable enough, but some filmmakers go full tilt in these endeavours, with a slew of films based on real events and real people, not surprisingly meeting with mixed results.
So it was for director Bryan Singer back in 2008, still reeling from the kickback of his 2006 reboot Superman Returns, working with sometimes collaborator, screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie in this spin on a truly compelling account of a few brave men trying to stop Hitler, the twist being they are German Nazi officers. It’s a very well made film, acted and directed that, just from the nature of its existence and proximity to actual events, lent itself to intense scrutiny and critical attention. Here’s more.
That’s a thing that tends to happen a lot with Tom Cruise movies, here starring in the lead as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, the very real army officer who attempted to assassinate the German Führer. Perhaps like no other actor, Cruise is often targeted for roles some feel he’s not suited to take, from Interview With A Vampire to The Firm to Jack Reacher and more, including this. Guy’s got to have some thick skin by now.
Either way, Cruise, Singer, and McQuarrie weren’t out to duplicate history to the ‘T’ but instead create an entertaining film around the truth, stacking it with memorable characters and exciting set pieces … and for the most part, succeed. Valkyrie is a genuinely suspenseful film with a good deal of history wound up in it that manages to make the convoluted trappings of the planned coup accessible and easy to follow.
The story follows Stauffenberg, who is at the start of the film, already disillusioned with his leader, privately believing he is a threat to Germany and the world. He doesn’t know it, but he’s not alone. A Major General named Henning von Tresckow, played by Kenneth Branagh, is also unhappy and working with a small team to kill Adolph with a small explosive. It doesn’t work. He also loses a key officer, arrested by the Gestapo. Not good.
Still, this allows him to slip Stauffenberg into the German Resistance and soon they are working on a new plan, though Stauffenberg, who has lost an eye and a hand in battle, is stunned to learn there is no plan in action for replacing the government after Hitler is dead. He puts into play a thing called Operation Valkyrie, and hope all they need to make it work falls into position. You can be sure, not all of it does.
It’s a calculated move in casting mostly British actors as German officers, with Bill Nye as General of Infantry Friedrich Olbricht, Terence Stamp as Ludwig Beck, Tom Wilkinson as General Friedrich Fromm, and Branagh as a resistance kingpin (who would, almost ten years later, play a British officer in Christopher Nolan‘s Dunkirk). Cruise is playing alongside some heavy hitters and yet holds his own, the action star always better than most credit him for, here perhaps not fully convincing as Stauffenberg but embracing the spirit with the usual enthusiasm that makes him so entertaining to watch.
The movie is one of the more talky World War II films out there with a lot of backdoor subterfuge and intense dialogue buffering the action pieces that do pop up, though this isn’t a distraction, the story interesting enough that while it’s a little odd to not see Cruise in full-on run and punch mode, it’s fascinating nonetheless to see him simmer while constrained. He would later of course work with McQuarrie on three Mission: Impossible movies, the Jack Reacher films, The Mummy, Edge of Tomorrow, and the upcoming Top Gun sequel, the pair really learning to mix the power of momentum through sharp words and purposeful action. Knowing that is weirdly helpful in watching this movie where that partnership got its start.
Valkyrie may not be the best in its class, with a few sluggish spots here and there, the film sometimes feeling mechanical in execution, yet it’s still good fun, if that’s the right way to put enjoying a movie about Nazis. Cruise commits as he always does, and it’s certainly a story worth knowing, the belief that all Germans were behind Hitler’s movement one in need of breaking. If anything, you’ll no doubt be heading to Wikipedia once it’s over, looking to see where it got things right and wrong, not to mention seeing just how eerily close Cruise looks to his real life counterpart. That’s right there is reason enough.