LM23 Rating: Tom Cruise looks great but that’s about it
In the last ten years, Tom Cruise has mainly been known for his action hero roles like in Mission Impossible, Jack Reacher, and now with Top Gun: Maverick. He’s more famous now for his death defying stunts and being able to do things like fly a helicopter or hang onto the side of a plane. But there was a time when Tom Cruise wasn’t always running and jumping and risking his life in a movie. So I took a look at his filmography to see if there was a non-superhuman hero like movie and Valkyrie seemed like one to check out. It stars Tom Cruise and is directed by Bryan Singer.
The film is a historical drama about the final attempt by a group of Nazi officers who plan to assassinate the German Chancellor otherwise known as Adolph Hitler. I don’t recall this story during history class, but despite knowing that obviously their plan didn’t work out, perhaps it was a close but no cigar situation. I mean, it has to be if they made a whole movie about it with Tom Cruise and other notable actors like Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, and Terence Stamp.
Turns out, attempted assassination attempts aren’t always that dramatic. And it’s even less dramatic and more boring when you don’t really understand why Nazis like Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) would risk their lives (and ultimately be executed) for wanting to plot a takeover of Germany by killing off the Fuhrer.
Operation Valkyrie, which is what Claus and his fellow insurgents tried to activate to overthrow the regime was a good plan. In essence, they were going to set off a bomb that would kill Adolph and with that, there would be a need for a succession plan and it would be the not as bad Nazis who would then take over.
What makes Valkyrie fall flat is that we never really learn much about the men involved in the plot. We see a little bit about Claus in that he has a wife and a few kids, but what threw me off was that as he was doing his Nazi soldier thing, he would at times be at home with the family. I was confused in that I didn’t know being a Nazi soldier could be a 9-5 job. But despite being a family man, what is it about Claus that made him risk his life and his family’s life to try to kill Adolph of all people?
We never see any signs of the atrocities of the Jewish people during this war. In fact, we never hear much of anything about any of that horror. We understand there’s a disagreement in the direction of the war, but there’s no sadness or sympathy towards the actions of their country on innocent people or anything. Were their motivations not as magnanimous as we would like to think if we were in their positions? Was it more that they saw Adolph was leading them towards losing and they didn’t want to be on the losing end? We all know the assassination didn’t work out, so the film needed to spend time explaining and exploring the reasons why all of these people would commit treason in the midst of a World War.
What was even more hard to understand was how did all of these people plot and plan without anyone noticing? There would be scenes where these guys would openly talk about their plan and all I could think of was keep it down! And when it was finally time for the assassination day of July 20, you have to wonder if this was how it was literally carried out. Because if this was, you can see why everyone involved was immediately arrested and killed.
I get that this is a historical drama, but this is also a movie. It’s okay to give a little bit of poetic license to engage the viewer. Would it have been so bad to have a more slicker set up and larger explosion? Let’s get some drama and action in this pivotal scene! Instead, Claus leaves his briefcase with the bomb behind and he leaves the room to get his “important phone call.” An explosion occurs though there doesn’t seem to be any damage or screaming or anything in the aftermath. Everything still looks okay at the Wolf’s Lair. And I’m not certain why people aren’t scrambling to get help or notice that this one guy is leaving the scene right after the explosion.
For a high ranking military officer, Claus and his buddies didn’t seem to understand how to be discreet. Is it normal and even okay for someone like Claus to leave a room during important meetings? I know when I’m the middle of a meeting, I can’t just randomly step out. If I do, everyone will know and they can see.
And don’t get me started on the depiction of Adolph in the movie. Adolph looks and acts like a walking zombie. The real Adolph looks as horrible as the things he’s done, and this one is no different. But this fictional Adolph also seems like he’s a cartoon character. Like whenever a movie or show features a known figure and it’s just an actor playing that celebrity, it always comes off fake. Like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. All those historical figures sort of look like the real people, but they’re clearly just playing dress up. This Adolph looked like that and he weirdly never really talked. In the scene where the bomb is about to go off, Adolph is like hunched over the table and making weird gestures with his fingers on a map and he never says one word. Was the real Adolph mute? What’s going on here?
I’ll let the various natural accents used in the film go, but it was disappointing that with this calibre of a cast the movie didn’t quite go anywhere. I’m sure the real events were probably way more dramatic and scary to go through than what we saw in the film. But maybe a one-time event that didn’t really do anything in the end maybe isn’t worth a whole film.
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