Heidi and I saw Valkyrie over the Christmas holidays. As most of you probably know, the movie dramatizes the attempted coup by the German Resistance toward the end of the war. The movie is written primarily from the perspective of Claus von Stauffenberg, the key figure in the attempted assassination of Hitler.
The movie is good and worth seeing, especially if you like historical fiction. I didn’t know anything about this particular attempt on Hitler’s life. In fact, even though I knew of the various attempts on Hitler’s life, I had no idea that the conspirators had detailed plans on retaking control of Germany from Hilter’s SS and Gestapo and the Nazi party itself. That’s where the movie really shines. These weren’t assassination attempts, but full on coup attempts inside a nationalistic, hyper-jingoistic regime. As Heidi put it, the story is compelling. The risks these men and their families ran to take on the Nazi party were enormous.
Unfortunately, the movie is hobbled by a few problems. Bad writing, possibly motivated by a desire to keep the script moving, simplifies dialog to very heavy-handed, simplistic exchanges. There is no nuance or subtlety. These are good guys, saying good things, doing good deeds to save Germany and everyone else. Huzzah… or something.
This probably directly contributed to the second major issue. I’m generally wary of historical fiction in film because too much context gets lost. It’s especially hard to make a movie that spends time talking about the political views of major characters while making a taut thriller. Even with those challenges, Valkyrie goes further by essentially stripping the Resistance characters of any ideology or detail aside from “they opposed Hitler” and “they had opposed the Nazi’s politically in the past.” They’re cardboard characters played by some phenomenal actors. So, watching the film, I became sensitive to anything that seemed to contradict my own (flawed, certainly) understanding of the history here. I was, for example, noting every mention of the Holocaust because I was concerned that the movie might try to make stopping the Holocaust a central motivator. If we were to believe most World War II movies, stopping the Holocaust was the primary reason the U.S. became involved in World War II. (I wish it were so) The movie doesn’t really go that far with these characters, but then again, it glosses over their motivation anyway.
Finally, Tom Cruise is, well, Tom Cruise. He does a decent job, but it doesn’t quite fit the film.
Heidi identified the problem as Cruise playing von Stauffenberg like an action hero. That seems like a valid criticism to me, though he might’ve been restricted by the script issues I mentioned above.
If you can ignore these things, you get rewarded with a good ending that actually maintains tension and interest even though, ultimately, we know how it ends. They focus on the details here of how the plot unfolds and how Hitler and Goebbels are ultimately able to turn back the coup. It was a satisfying ending to an decent film.
I’d recommend seeing it when it hits video. Not really a must see in the theater, but it’s a good introduction to this bit of history.
One other note: the history here is actually interesting. You can start at the Wikipedia page for the 20 July plot of 1944 and go from there. The coup was thwarted by a number of different failures, and I’m curious now to read more about it. On that note, the film succeeds quite well.
