Valkyrie

It’s actually a very solid film. Problem is, when portraying the Nazi regime, more than solidity is required. If anything, being solid is a disadvantage when a nuanced exploration of character, motivation and morality is what the subject matter and viewing audience demands. So adept is Bryan Singer at establishing suspense and – I believe the verb is ‘ratcheting’ – up tension, that Valkyrie comes off like Speed with swashikas and downbeat ending. But let’s make no mistake – Cruise is not Keanu Reeves, and his work as Stauffenberg is as solid as the film as a whole. But as Empire’s review has noted, we need more. Beyond an opening voiceover (which apparently in the US and UK features the unlikely prospect of Cruise speaking German, though this was oddly not the case in the continental European cut I watched in Berlin) and a brief sequence establishing his war injuries, we just get Maverick’s slightly older, more sensible brother. Again – historical accuracy aside – it’s solid: he’s a good guy, he has (extremely) legitimate doubts about Hitler. But why? Who can really tell. So you’re forced to watch the film as a thriller, not a moral exploration. Which is fine. But it would have been better to have the option, as one did with The Dark Knight (which I go on about at length below). If Singer wants to make a seriously good thriller, he should base it on a group of crooks manipulated to their own fate by a cunning criminal, and cast someone like Kevin Spacey. No, wait a minute …

The well-documented brilliance of the supporting cast is both a help and a hindrance. Exchanges between Kenneth Branagh and Cruise are distractingly imbalanced, while his cohorts in the superb HBO/BBC collaboration Conspiracy – Kevin McNally and Ian McNeice – bring depth and urgency. And if you’ve seen that film, imagine Cruise playing Branagh’s role … No, I don’t want to either. Yet in Valkyrie, that’s pretty much what’s happening. All of the Stauffenberg Plot’s protagonists knew what was at stake when they signed up – and this is very much evident in Bill Nighy’s infuriating indecisiveness and Eddie Izzard’s desperate double-dealing. But Cruise’s Jerry McGuire-esque recruitment tactics are out of synch – it’s not shown in the film, but hundreds of people were tortured and put to death in the aftermath of the failed assassinated – including friends, families and associates of all involved. If I had been appointed Staffenberg’s PA only to be told with a smirk that my first assignment was high treason against the Führer, I’d have been a lot less accommodating than Jamie Parker’s Lieutenant von Häften.

Watching the film in Germany adds yet more resonance at several levels. Since opening its provocatively ostentatious new office in Berlin, the Scientology movement have not received much love from the Germans, whose government is one of the few to deny it status as a legitimate religion. Every one of my German friends, when asked about Valkyrie, has spoken not about historical accuracy or similar, but about the fact they don’t like Tom Cruise because of his extra-curricular activities. Coupled with the studio’s inexplicable decision to market the film in Germany with huge posters of Cruise giving it his eye-patched, jaw-clenching best which omit every other member of the cast, ‘Walküre’ was never going to do that well round here. Even worse, in Berlin some enterprising group of (possibly right-wing, possibly anti-Scientology, possibly just idiot) vandals have taken to sticking black labels across Cruise’s top lip. Bizarre. And disturbing.

AP’s movie critic suggests that any of the supporting cast could have done a better job in the lead role, while Empire reckons that the film ought to have focussed on Thomas Kretschmann’s dryly weary officer. And given that actor’s brilliant showing in The Pianist, I can’t help but wonder what Valkyrie could have been if Singer hadn’t engaged Cruise control.