Review of Valkyrie (2008) by Markb. — 22 Jan 2009

It's all in the eye. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) loses one of his (plus 70% of his fingers) in a wartime explosion, and when visiting Adolf Hitler, snaps on an artificial one presumably because of the Fuehrer's high regard for physical perfection.

..but in most other situations makes do with an eye patch. Why not wear the fake orb ALL the time? This may hold the key to why von Stauffenberg's assassination plot, admirable as its intentions may be, was doomed to failure from the start: von Stauffenberg simply calls too much attention to himself.

(This tendency is further explored in one of Valkyrie's best sequences: von Stauffenberg, upon being chastized for not "heil Hitler-ing", immediately, sarcastically overcompensates.) Of the sudden pack of Nazi/ Holocaust-themed movies suddenly surrounding us, Valkyrie is the most traditional, genre-based, and old-fashioned; it could've played quite snugly in 1966 on a very satisfying double bill with The Dirty Dozen.

(At age 52, I was the audience's spring chicken at the showing I attended.) Even though most of us already know the outcome of von Stauffenberg's plot going in (or at least SHOULD, depending on how good a job our public schools are doing) Valkyrie still succeeds at being not only surprisingly and admirably tense and suspenseful, but even heartbreaking as we come to know something that our heroes are blissfully (and tragically) unaware of.

(Adolf's resiliency becomes Hitchcock's famed bomb-under-the-table.) Director Bryan Singer's comic book adaptations (particularly Superman Returns) suffer from a heavy dose of misplaced gravitas, but given the urgency of his subject matter here, this time his approach is just right.

And can we all just lay off Tom Cruise already? The man did a few silly things in public and paid for them (and shouldn't even have had to do THAT for exercising his right to publicly express his religious beliefs; it's a disgrace that he had to appear on TV to defend his friend and fellow believer John Travolta's during a very private, tragic time in the latter's family life) and Cruise's trademark on-screen quality--steely determination (never better displayed than in his "Love it or leave it!" speech in Born on the Fourth of July, where he's desperately trying to convince himself) is abundantly present here.

Besides, nobody ever talks about Cruise's SECOND most noticeable acting quality...his utter generosity. Cuba Gooding Jr., Ken Watanabe and Jamie Foxx have scored Oscar nominations or awards playing opposite him, and Cruise is equally both self-effacing and self-assured here in allowing such Brit heavyweights as Kenneth Branagh, Tom Wilkinson and Eddie Izzard to pilfer their scenes.

Cruise hasn't quite seen a Robert Downey Jr.-like resurrection this year, but between this movie deservedly coming off far better than expected, and his one-for-the-books turn as Dancing Hollywood Butthole in Tropic Thunder.

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