The movie starts off with an introduction speech by Stauffenberg (Cruise) in perfect German. It is then slowly phased into English. After the attack that cost Stauffenberg his fingers, right hand and eye, we head for a crash course of who's whom and what's what in Hitler's Germany, all the way until the closing execution scene.Most people, I'm sure, had already know the ending to this based-on-history movie. But the question to ask while watching Valkyrie is not "What happened in the end?" but instead, "What went wrong?" The movie shows us what was the flaw of Operation Valkyrie and why no one can kill Hitler but himself.
Bryan Singer got everything spot on. The tension and intensity of the film is there. You feel the suspense even if you had already memorized the WWII history. One thing that I found interesting was how Singer depicted Hitler, not as a mad man with murderous intention and hatred, but as pure evil. Whenever he is on screen, everything felt dead silent, sombre and dark. Starting from the first scene he's in all the way to the last phone call scene, in which we do not even see his face, just hear his voice.
This is the kind of mood that I'm sure we'd feel if we were in that era. And this is the way a good director interpret a scene.
But, what went wrong with Valkyrie (as in, the movie, not the operation)? Well, the cast. Everyone did their job well, I can give you that. But it seems that everyone could have top it up a notch. The accent was all over the place and it looks like no one was living as their characters. (Tom Cruise and some other actors were all too "patchy" in the movie)Other than that, Valkyrie is a well made movie. The directing and editing was well played, and the script and tone of the movie was anything a well-made movie should have.
Valkyrie shall forever remain in director Bryan Singer's unbroken line of masterpieces.
