Valkyrie (From Worcester News)

Valkyrie

11:36pm Tuesday 10th February 2009

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VALKYRIE is a great film. Tom Cruise’s best since Interview With The Vampire way back in 1994.

This thriller loses nothing from the fact that most of the audience, in fact anyone with a passing history of the Second World War will already know the ending.

But as with any decent ‘based-on-a-true-story’ flick, it’s how we get to climatic end that’s the clincher.

The film follows Tom Cruise’s Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, a senior officer in the German Army and his key involvement in the audacious attempt by a group of disenchanted army officers and politicians to kill Adolf Hitler, at the height of the war.

Cruise, as accomplished as I’ve seen him in recent years, as the white knight von Stauffenberg who agrees to deliver a bomb to a military briefing where Hitler is present, hopefully killing the leader of the Third Reich.

The film is lifted throughout by a roll-call of Britain’s finest contemporary greats, men whose names we’ve become used to seeing in top films, men like Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, and Kenneth Branagh.

The target of the plot, Hitler, who appears only briefly, is portrayed as a nervy man on the edge, a deeply menacing figure by the superb David Bamber, who did such an excellent job of the senator Cicero in the swords and sandles television series Rome.

I don’t know what it is about Nazi Germany, but visually from the uniforms to the architecture, it always makes a good visual – perfect for the movies.

We are shown the rot and decadence at the heart of the Nazi system with German officers entertaining dolled-up floozies over whiskey, compared artfully with the hard grey symmetry and order of Albert Speer’s Berlin.

Actually, fascism’s obsession with appearance and state pomp, Berlin’s building’s draped in red flag swastikas, gives a clear picture of life inside Hitler’s Germany, it’s huge scope, and the sheer size of the challenge von Stauffenberg’s plotters were up against.

The pacing is good too, editing is tight and the plot never feels rushed or squeezed.

Tension in both the scenes where Cruise’s von Stauffenberg plants the bomb near Hitler’s feet and afterwards, when the plotters struggle to quickly secure support of their coup d’etat while news leaks out that Hitler has survived, builds nicely, and your quietly sliding towards the edge of your seat.

Director Brian Singer gives us some fine scenes pregnant with thoughts of ‘what-if, from the shot of German soldiers storming the headquarters of the dreaded SS, to a lowly communications officer who decides to continue issuing orders from both von Stauffenberg and Hitler – eventually undoing the coup.

The most meaningful scene of the movie for me however, is about half way through.

After a heathed argument, Cruise’s von Stauffenberg is asked by a German general to pay proper respect to ‘der Fuhrer’.

Von Stauffenberg turns on his heel and facing a large portrait of Hitler on the wall, extends his right arm, ending in the smooth profile of his amputated hand – lost in a bomb attack - and barks ‘Heil Hitler’. Blunt metaphor at its best.

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