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Valkyrie (2008)

Director: Bryan Singer

Time Out rating

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45 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

DVD is ruining historical education in this country: with hundreds of movies now available, there’s no reason for the families of middle England to gather around the TV on a wet bank holiday afternoon to watch ‘The Colditz Story’ for the umpteenth time. But help is at hand: in ‘Valkyrie’, Tom Cruise doesn’t just set out to beat the Boche, but to save the great British Sunday.
It’s surprising that Hollywood never got around to making an all-star epic about the plot of July 1944, in which a group of disgruntled generals, led by the aristocratic von Stauffenberg (Cruise), attempted to off the Führer and rescue Germany’s reputation. The failure of the assassination plan, and the attempted coup that followed, marked the end of organised Germanic resistance to Hitler’s regime.

Director Bryan Singer takes a staunchly old-school approach, assembling a cast of reliable British thesps and dividing the action between swastika-adorned wood-panelled offices and rainswept, shadowy Berlin streets. The period is exactingly recreated, with the camera lingering lovingly over leather jackboots, snarling dogs and those fetishistic, immaculately starched uniforms.
‘Valkyrie’ has serious flaws: the script, by Nathan Alexander and Singer’s longtime compadre Christopher McQuarrie, takes an age to get going and steers clear of any moral ambiguity. Too many of the prestigious cast – notably Kenneth Branagh and token female Carice van Houten – are underused, and the accents are simply ludicrous, with Cruise’s mid-American drawl sitting awkwardly alongside Branagh’s cultured RP and the Führer’s Teutonic whine. But as old-fashioned historical escapism goes, this is solid, compelling stuff.

Author: Tom Huddleston 2009-01-20 11:47:23

Time Out London Issue 2005, 22-28 Jan. 2009

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User reviews of this film

Paul said...

Posted on Feb 05 2009 09:24 This film would have been decent if it wasn't for the actors. When you are making a film about Nazi Germany I really feel that it should be done in German with subtitles. English speaking actors talking in American & English accents simply does not cut it. There were a few moments where I actually burst out laughing at how awful some of them sounded.

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Larry Bone said...

Posted on Feb 02 2009 04:38 It's all relative whether you are optimistic or fatalistic about how better or worse English and American society are now compared to Germany under the Nazis from 1933 through 1945 although Hitler was on the scene from 1925. Today the emphasis is not on a superhuman Nordic race, it is instead on perfect male and female bodies. Slight adjustment there. And where a body is only considered a mass of flesh and blood it would seem superficially easy to figure out how it all works. But that basic mistake lays the ground for all sorts of mistakes or misassumptions. And people as individuals become unimportant because they are reduced by simplistic thinking into being all the same. Germany was an educated society with excellent universities. It is true hate crimes would not be tolerated in any society with any infrastructure but today, hate crimes are rampant in uncivilized and some historically civilized countries. We may not be lead by cocaine addicted like leaders. But where the Nazis were testing drugs on people, pharmaceutical companies have bought off politicians to allow drugs massively on the market that have not been thoroughly tested or whose adverse or ineffective test results have been hidden as "trade secrets". So the actual testing occurs after the drugs are on the market. Pharmaceutical companies stigmatize people exhibiting normal behavior by having them labelled mentally ill. And then they hypocritically accuse normal people of stigmatizing the actually mentally ill who actually and for real aren't normal. So where you don't have drug addled leaders you have more and more drug addled populations. More and more people are gotten onto more and more drugs that can induce a state of mind where Nazi like crimes can be committed and it will never be considered a war crime, just a sort of war crime committed in a peaceful society with no war. So that seems extremely pessimistic and even more so because it being pretty much ignored except on the internet and because of such things the future does not look bright or cheery.

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Dave said...

Posted on Jan 31 2009 20:31 While reading everyone's postings here, I was reminded of the quip falsely attributed to Voltaire (I'm sure I'm paraphrasing)- "I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."
I see a lot of idealism in some of the postings. Idealism is one thing, and reality very often quite different. Idealism says to protest what is wrong. Reality is you get fired, you're sprayed with tear gas or water cannon, you're shot dead at Kent State, you and your family are sent to the Gulag (if you're not all shot). Reality is all that, and smaller things that may hurt even more (believe it or not), like your friends/coworkers suddenly not saying "good morning," "how ya doin," "Manchester really got trashed on Sunday!" or just looking the other way when you near them. Idealism may rule the mind, but survival rules the body.
In any court of law, the threat to society is what must ultimately be decided upon. The threat of an adult performing the same act, whether it's carjacking, armed robbery, rape, driving drunk, systemic or spur-of-the-moment murder, or even littering is higher than the threat of a child repeating it. Adults have had years in which to practice these acts. Very many of them live a lifestyle that demands they act in a certain manner, and so they do. The real threat to society is not the performer of the act, but the idea of the act being a sane way to live. For instance: I lose control of my vehicle, hit a light pole and knock it down. It is immaterial whether I lose control because of black ice on the road, or a child darts out onto the road, or I'm talking on my phone. I have performed the act of hitting the pole. Of course, the idea that hitting light poles with my car is something to do every day, or every now and then, is patently insane.
The rabid Nazi is one of these people. Addicted to the glitz and glamour of absolute power, they were as helpless as any using crack addict. Those ones were insane. Do you honestly think that today's courts would not send someone for psychiatric evaluation if they dressed up like a Nazi, goose-stepping though town, shooting and yelling that Jews and Gypsies were the cause of all our problems? Of course they would. Food for thought: Is the real rabid Nazi any less insane than the fake rabid Nazi that I just described? I don't think so.
The greatest impact the Allies had on ensuring Nazism would not rear its ugly head again was to rebuild Germany after the war. Churchill was right about 10 million things, but he was very much wrong in wanting to turn Germany into an agricultural nation. We all know where feudalism got us. I could facetiously say that Nazism is Feudalism in black leather.
How does all this fit in this forum regarding the film Valkyrie? We have crack addicts in our individual national societies today, but they are not the sum of all Britons, or of all Americans, or of all Canadians. Neither were the rabid Nazis the sum of all Germans. One of the many difference between us is that Nazi Germany was (news flash!) run by rabid Nazis. Can you imagine our nation being run by crack addicts? The details would be different, but the substance would be the same (no pun intended).
Whether you have a thick head or not, try to understand the idea - Not all (fill-in-the-blank) are bad. Conversely, try to remember the one idea we seem to forget - Not all (fill-in-the-blank) are good!

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Katrin said...

Posted on Jan 31 2009 18:50 To Mr Vallence:
I am rather surprised that you dare to assess the circumstances in the Third Reich more than 60 years later. Where did you get all your information from? After reading numerous books - not only about Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, but a lot of others involved in the assassination - as well as watching documentaries and being at historical places like the Bendler Block in Berlin where you can learn a lot about the German resistance, I have to say what you wrote is utter rubbish.

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Katrin said...

Posted on Jan 31 2009 18:50 To Mr Vallence:
I am rather surprised that you dare to assess the circumstances in the Third Reich more than 60 years later. Where did you get all your information from? After reading numerous books - not only about Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, but a lot of others involved in the assassination - as well as watching documentaries and being at historical places like the Bendler Block in Berlin where you can learn a lot about the German resistance, I have to say what you wrote is utter rubbish.

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Katrin said...

Posted on Jan 31 2009 18:42 To Bruce Vallence:
I am glad that more than 60 years later people know exactly how circumstances were in the Third Reich and that they obviously would have been heroes from the time HItler was inaugurated and even before. After reading numerous books about this assessination and everybody who was involved - not only Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg - as well as seeing documentaries and visiting the Bendler Block in Berlin where you can learn a lot about the German resistance, I have to say that I have never read that much rubbish as Mr Vallence wrote.

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Andrew Thomson said...

Posted on Jan 31 2009 11:50 A well put together movie based on fact. Powerful story allthough historically you know the outcome. The acting was very good with a great number of British actors, all of whom were tremendous in their part. Tom Cruise what talent! As normal makes it look easy. I could watch it again.

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PERFECT DAY said...

Posted on Jan 30 2009 20:46 Truly awful. B standard British actors. This should have been gritty and spectacular. Instead, it's as limp as a wet lettuce.

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ha!! said...

Posted on Jan 29 2009 18:22 its really nerrdy........

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Dave said...

Posted on Jan 28 2009 20:30 It's a truism that history is written by the winners. As children, we are exposed only to that. Being adult now, it's time to weigh each side in the balance (can you imagine Lady Justice filling her scales with the arguments of one side only?).
Some of the posters here may not believe it, but all German weren't NAZIs. In fact, not all NAZIs were the gung-ho automatons that history records them being. Don't mistake me for a NAZI apologist. I am in my 35th year of active duty and would fight NAZIs as my father did after landing at Juno beach on D-Day.
This film was made for three reasons: 1. To make a profit (no denying that), 2. To capture a story before other filmmakers will, and 3. To entertain the audience in order to ensure name recognition in the film maker's/participant's next venture. Films are made in the first place because of reason #1. Films are produced because of reason #2. Films are produced well because of reason #3. Valkyrie satisfies all 3.
For those of you who may be interested in the daily life of a German officer prior, during, and post WW2 (during Soviet imprisonment), I highly recommend "Soldat." It is the autobiography of Siegfried Knappe (1917-2008), a young artillery officer who fought in France, Italy, and the Soviet Union, and also served on the General Staff. He was one of the last occupants of the Furherbunker.

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Polina said...

Posted on Jan 28 2009 15:42 just great. impressive

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Polina said...

Posted on Jan 28 2009 15:42 just great. impressive

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Tim H said...

Posted on Jan 27 2009 22:30 Gripping.. but not for most ladies I suspect.. it is grey, teutonic and utilitarian. This is not light entertainment. good use of £6:50 !

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lbone said...

Posted on Jan 27 2009 04:36 Most people will see a film if they thing it will be entertaining. I think the great thing about the film is that it sort of takes you behind German lines at that time. People tend to be either not interested in what was happening at that time or more broadly what led up to to what happened or didn't happen or what could have happened and didn't. If you have been to Berlin there is a certain feel to certain places like those in the film, that the film sort of captured. Seeing the film I kept wondering what if such and such had happened slightly differently. And you really get that feeling more intensely going over the history of the war and earlier German Prussian history. Each to his own point of view.

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rifka said...

Posted on Jan 26 2009 14:29 i dont know why everyone commenting on this thinks they are actual movie critics. Visiting the cinema weekly doesnt guarantee a career. The film was good and was true to the historical facts and i know this because i did A levels history, not because i watch numerous other war films. And i dont like Tom Cruise as a person but as an actor i cant fault him. I think people should just calm down on the over analysis, after all, your not the ones producing films and making loads of money. I think people are a bit bitter actually:)

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