"Questionable Cruise performance aside, Bryan Singer’s new drama is nothing short of electrifying... mainly due to the accomplished Brit co-leads."

Operation Valkyrie finally gets the green light, and it’s a mixed bag of reactions. Controversy and doubt as to Tom Cruise’s casting has dogged the actor since the project’s beginning phases. Although Cruise gives a totally committed performance to honour ‘war hero’ von Stauffenberg, his accent and one-dimensional Hollywood persona get in the way of portraying quite a complex and astounding character who deserves far more depth and charisma injected into this historical recreation. Von Stauffenberg was not just any Nazi collaborator, in turmoil with his true, treason-filled beliefs, but one who risked everything to attempt to bring down a tyrant.

Thankfully, the wealth of British acting talent in the film, including Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson and Terence Stamp succeed in saving the proceedings from verging on a war-time disaster to deliver highly polished and well-rounded performances (as they always can be relied on to do so), and inject the necessarily fear, confusion and stoicism to pull together an ultimately absorbing thriller. It is disputable why more home-grown German talent was not used in a film that was shot in Germany and at many of the actual locations where events occurred?

In addition, the beginning ‘establishing’ scenes - the first set in Africa, resembling something from Indiana Jones - do little to convince that there is far more substance to come, short of the goose-stepping formations and faltering egos. It is in the latter-half of the film that the nail-biting tension dramatically accelerates, and each character becomes far more interesting to bear witness to. This, coupled with the knowledge that what these real-life, resistance men instigated was nothing short of the utterly audacious, is the key ingredient that propels this gripping tale forwards.

A questionable Cruise performance aside, Bryan Singer’s new drama is nothing short of electrifying as the pieces of the courageous plan begin to unravel, in part, due to the accomplished co-leads and shear disbelief at the daring magnitude of this extraordinary, historic operation.

Synopsis

In a country in the grips of evil, in a police state where every move is being watched in a world where justice and honor have been subverted, a group of men hidden inside the highest reaches of power decide to take action. Tom Cruise stars in the tense thriller, based on the true story of Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg and the daring and ingenious plot to eliminate one of the most evil tyrants the world has ever known.

A proud military man, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a loyal officer who serves his country all the while hoping that someone will find a way to stop Hitler before Europe and Germany are destroyed. Realizing that time is running out, he decides that he must take action himself and joins the German resistance. Armed with a cunning strategy to use Hitler’s own emergency plan - known as Operation Valkyrie - these men plot to assassinate the dictator and overthrow his Nazi government from the inside. With everything in place, with the future of the world, the fate of millions and the lives of his wife and children hanging in the balance, von Stauffenberg is thrust from being one of many who oppose Hitler to the one who must kill Hitler himself.

Film Facts

Official UK site: http://www.valkyrie-the-movie.co.uk/

UK Release Date: 23rd January 2009

Director: Bryan Singer

Writer: Christopher McQuarrie, Nathan Alexander

Cast: Tom Cruise ('Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg'), Bill Nighy ('General Friedrich Olbricht'), Tom Wilkinson ('General Friedrich Fromm'), Carice Van Houten ('Nina von Stauffenberg'), Eddie Izzard ('General Erich Fellgiebel'), Thomas Kretschmann ('Major Otto Ernst Remer'), Terence Stamp ('Ludwig Beck'), Christian Berkel ('Colonel Mertz von Quirnheim'), Kenneth Branagh ('Major-General Henning von Tresckow'), Halina Reijn ('Margarethe von Oven')

UK Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Certificate: 12A

Run-time: 112 mins

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