Viewed in
2012
Formats
HDTV
Premise
Based on true events, Tom Cruise stars as a WWII German officer who plots an assassination attempt on Hitler.
Thoughts
Um, it wasn't good enough to talk about it, nor was it goofy enough to mock it. The subject was compelling, but the movie was not.
Best part would be the cast, especially the armada of cool English actors. With Cruise, they did their darndest to act the hell out of this with all seriousness while not looking pretentious. I've never seen Bill Nighy in a serious role, so there's that. And I guess I could compliment director Bryan Singer's ability to not have the movie drag.
Knowing that Hitler wasn't killed at the end probably contributed to how boring the movie felt. When something is that obvious, you'd hope the acting or story-telling would make up for that weakness. However, I simply found it confusing with too many indistinguishable minor characters and an unclear assassination gameplan, so when when things go haywire, the consequences were not understood. Since so much time had to be dedicated to subterfuge and political maneuvering, none of the characters were interesting or sympathetic, not even Cruise.
Lastly, I was bummed that Valkyrie was so okay that Cruise's eyepatch couldn't be Unintentional Comedy fodder, considering this came near the tail end of his "jumping the couch"/scientology-pimping phase.
