When my sister suggested that we go view the new film about a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Valkyrie, I was hesitant. To begin with, I am NOT a Tom Cruise fan by any stretch of the imagination and this was even before he took a dive off the deep end in his scientology craze. Secondly, I had seen the preview for the movie and thought that the idea seemed cool since it was a true story but was really turned off due to all the actors sounding like they were American or English with no detectable German accent. My opinion was that if a film was to be made about an internal assassination attempt on Hitler, the actors should speak German or at least speak with a German accent. Despite these feelings of doubt, I still went to the movie.
It turns out that my hesitation was well deserved. To begin with, I had an extremely hard time pretending that these English speaking actors were in the German Army. The opening scene features Tom Cruise in the Northern African desert campaigns lamenting the fact that the Nazis were leading Germany into its ultimate demise. He just is not believable as a German officer and especially as an upstanding German gentleman who is well respected amongst his peers. The entire movie, especially the ending (not giving away anything here), just seem like a pathetic attempt by Cruise to get back into the good graces of audiences after his scientology downfall. The audience knows going into the movie that Hitler will not be assassinated so it is not surprising when he survives the assassination and the entire plot just did not seem that suspenseful to me. Personally, I would not rank it high on my list of good World War II movies, especially when they ran the preview for the Jewish Resistance movie, Defiance, starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schrieber (coming out either in one week or in three weeks- those limited releases are so confusing). I felt like I was wishing I was watching that movie during the entirety of this film.
