Tom Cruise is on the move to resurrect his career. Funny, that the crowned King of Scientology needs to rise from the dead like a certain Christian deity that he has chosen to rebuke. The move for a career shake up should be obvious. First he dabbled in comedy by portraying an over-worked and over-weight movie producer in Ben Stiller’s summer comedy “Tropic Thunder”. For the first time in his career Tom asked us to laugh with him. The only time he’d ever asked us as fans to do that was when he played Austin Powers in the in-movie movie preview they showed during Austin Powers 3.
Now, in “Valkyrie” Tom Cruise shifts us back to his dramatic side. His turn as real-life historical figure Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is once again against the grain of Cruise’s past normalcy. Cruise plays the part well enough, however the movie falls into a great many pit falls.
First and most importantly, “Valkyrie” is supposed to take place in Adolf Hitler’s World War 2 Germany. Why, director Bryan Singer (“X-Men” and “Superman Returns”) decided to cast not only Cruise, but also a bevy of thick accented and recognizable Brits is beyond any all comprehension. In fact the only instance in the entire film when any actors (Including David Bamber as Hitler himself) even speak a hint of German- in the very opening of the movie, where Claus von Stauffenberg is writing an entry into his journal. Normally, we go to films to escape reality- and therefore the fact that this movie isn’t exactly accurate shouldn’t bother you. However, this is a true story. Wouldn’t you think the director and those involved would want to stay as true to the source as possible?
As stated, almost every actor besides Cruise will make you do a double take, and spend at least thirty seconds trying to decide what other movies you’ve seen them in. There’s Bill Nighy (“Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Underworld”), there is Kenneth Branagh (“Harry Potter”), Tom Wilkinson (“The Patriot”, “Batman Begins” and “Michael Clayton”), Terence Stamp (“Star Wars”), Kevin McNally (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) and even Tom Hollander (“Pirates of the Caribbean”) just to name a few. There are others!
It is the belief of this critic that “Valkyrie” would have been better portrayed as an indie-film using actual German actors speaking in German, with subtitles used at the bottom of the screen. The actors in this movie didn’t even look like they were German. I saw a better Hitler portrayed in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
The other pit fall the film has is that any movie that is historically accurate means that the audience, unless not educated in the event, already knows how it’s going to end. “Valkyrie” is a movie about one of the many assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life. If you’ve been to school, or at least never have lived under a rock- than you know going into it, that Hitler was never assassinated. If you do that math- than all you really need to do is sit through the first three quarters of the film and then imagine the rest.
All of that being said, there are some suspenseful scenes throughout the film, which for a film labeled as a suspense-drama, is a good thing. Also for me, admittedly though I knew the eventual outcome I was not fully aware of everything in between so the film did get a bit befuddling at times when they were throwing out names of new characters, or group planning together. It was a nice when they explained everything by going step by step through their master plan.
“Valkryie” is a film that doesn’t have to be seen in theatres for a $10 price tag plus popcorn. It’s not the movie that is going resurrect Tom Cruise’s career. You’re not going to leave the theatre a changed person. You’re not going to ever have to see it again and again. You’re never going to need to own it in your personal collection and you might not even recommend it to friends. But if you’re a history buff, a war movie buff, or even if you’ve seen everything else and want to go catch another- “Valkryie” will entertain you. I supposed, in the end, that’s all you can really ask for from a film.
No comments:
Post a Comment