Tom Cruise once said in an interview that Valkyrie wasn’t a World War II film, but that it was a thriller set in the period. It’s odd, then, that there are very few thrills to accompany its interesting, but poorly executed premise. The relatively unknown story of the July 20th plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler is a fantastic story to read about, but when translated to the silver screen, it’s not nearly as moving as Schindler’s List, engaging as Saving Private Ryan or entertaining like The Great Escape.
But it starts out well enough. Tom Cruise’s character, whose name isn’t spoken for the better part of an hour, is wounded in Tunisia, forcing him to leave the front lines for good and stick to a tactical position behind a desk. You’re briefly given the impression that a select few Nazi soldiers are plotting to take Hitler down, but from here, the story development is limited. Rather than introducing viewers to the people involved in the conspiracy, director Bryan Singer expects his audience to fully grasp who Cruise’s Stauffenberg, as well as the committee around him, is.
Being thrust in to the middle of a treasonous ploy leaves you confused as you try to decipher which character is playing which part in the plot. Not being able to understand the relationships between Stauffenberg and the people he periodically recruits makes a bigger mess of things, especially when the film, again, expects you to completely understand these folks’ past motives and involvement with various assassination plots.
When Valkyrie isn’t leaving you behind or burying you with new people to keep tabs of, it’s tolerable — engaging, even. The sense of fear and suspense when Hitler enters a room is practically tangible; Stauffenberg’s intense focus and undying dedication to his goal is admirable, and Cruise convincingly plays the part of the patriot; and seeing the final assassination attempt executed, as well as the chaos that comes from the brilliant plan to utilize Hitler’s reserve army to take over Europe in an evening, is a well paced set of scenes. It’s disappointing that these few well done moments are drowned in the film’s flaws, and that the plodding tale sluggishly moves along before anticlimactically concluding with a finale that any high school-educated viewer can see coming.
The lack of exposition and bombardment of unintroduced characters keep you out of the loop for the majority of the movie, but the day that a small squadron of Nazis almost assassinated their leader to topple the Nazi reign is a fantastic tale that people should hear about. It’s just too bad that a history book will more easily hold your interest than the slow paced and anticlimactic adventure that Cruise and crew take part in.
