Post by ronnierocketago on Jan 23, 2009 9:13:11 GMT
VALKYRIE (2008) - ***1/2
Man, this movie got way too much shit back at Christmas. Does Hollywood really now despise Tom Cruise that much? If so, where the hell were they when we were getting Cruise crap like TOP GUN and the terrible M:I 2? I hate to break this news to you all, but I was beating him up years before the rest of you finally got balls to do so in public. If anybody else but Tom Cruise had been casted for VALKYRIE, like say Johnny Depp for example, I guarantee that at least half of the negative reviews would have reversed course.
Hell on the way to see this in theatres, I heard some smart-ass remark that: “If it’s between Nazis and Tom Cruise, I’m rooting for the Nazis!”[/b]
Yeah Cruise acted daffy and insane years ago with the couch-jumping and scientology, but my real problem with him has usually been that out in public he always seem to came off as a total asshole. Worse, as an actor he had the nasty tendency of coasting off his equally annoying stupid dipshit youthful hotshot TOP GUN persona, even decades later into his 40s (like in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III.)
That said, I must admit that when Cruise takes a project seriously and actually bothers to act, he can be great. He got rightly Oscar nominated for Oliver Stone's BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY to Paul Thomas Anderson's MAGNOLIA, and I thought he should have been honored as well for his badass villainy in Michael Mann's COLLATERAL. Hell, he was even fun and arguably stole the show in the recent TROPIC THUNDER.
But even then, Cruise somehow finds a way to make you still despise him inspite of whatever genuine cinema success he produces. Take that media report of how he held a private screening of VALKYRIE at his house, and all critics were welcomed as long as they afterwards either pen positive reviews, or stay silent. To be fair this practice aint anything new, for even Steven Spielberg did something similar for his A.I., but such antics doesn't help Cruise's damaged reputation. Maybe after CouchGate, many in Hollywood finally found their opportunity for revenge against former Toast of Town Cruise without serious reprisals.
So basically by sheer guilt by star association, along with reported production troubles (like a German lab ruining the filmed-climax, which forced a reshoot), VALKYRIE got bad buzz as an expensive flop before anyone had even seen it. A pity because it's actually a pretty good movie, a satisfying thriller that is suspenseful in spite of the fact that we all already know the ending: The July 20 plot by Germans to explode Adolf Hitler and overthrow the Nazi government fails, and everyone involved within that conspiracy is promptly executed.
Yeah, sorry about spoiling the movie.
Now alot of critics have whined about how VALKYRIE implodes because there was no "psychological exploration" to explain the characters' motivations. Director Bryan Singer and writer/producer Christopher McQuarrie I truely believe strived to produce a streamlined action-thriller drama in the vein of those World War 2 novels that we used to get from Jack Higgins and Alistair MacLean.
You might know what I'm talking about, those books about a squad of men undertaking an insane mission and fighting against impossible odds. They may be trying to bomb Nazi cannons (THE GUNS OF NAVARONE) or storm a German fortress up in the Alps (WHERE EAGLES DARE) or try to assassinate Winston Churchill in Ireland (THE EAGLE HAS LANDED) or whatever. Notice how VALKYRIE's poster and marketing is heavily influenced by that of THE DIRTY DOZEN. The difference between them and Singer's VALKYRIE is that for one his movie is slightly less fantastical, and second the July 20 plot of 1944 wasn't fiction and actually happened....[/b] which was sorta the case for THE GREAT ESCAPE as well.
But fuck man it's Hitler!!! You don't exactly have to try hard to convince me to kill that bastard. Plus, last I checked, I think most of us by now are sorta aware that Nazi Germany didn't exactly tolerate dissidents. Remember that early scene RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK when the government agents told Indiana Jones about the Nazis trying to steal the Ark of the Covenant? Why as a kid we all had the same reaction: "Han Solo, you can't let those evil mother fuckers get their hands on the Ark!"[/b]
People, there is a reason why the Nazis have always been a favorite villainy of Hollywood: Everyone hates them, shit even Germans today do too.
I must admit, Roger Donaldson's THIRTEEN DAYS had similar dramatic limitations like VALKYRIE did, and it is a superior picture because DAYS allowed us to understand the pressures and mentality that can beset any American President during an international crisis. Alot of those conspirators wanted Hitler dead not just out of morale outrage or that the Fuhrer was destroying the proud heritage of the German military, but also by 1944 they were losing the war. Even if that coup de tat had succeeded, those plotters' hope for an Armistice reminiscent of 1918 from the Anglo-Americans (so Germany could concentrate fully on the Soviet invasion) was a pipe dream considering that the Allies had agreed to end the war only by unconditional surrender.
Anyway, could Singer and crew have folded such complexities into VALKYRIE? Sure, but for the movie that I think the Gay Jewish Singer wanted, VALKYRIE works very fine for what it is. I don't exactly know how I would have improved that narrative as planned. Maybe you detractors can write up some fan fiction and prove me wrong. I also liked Singer's touch in shooting a hallway shootout between Cruise and Nazis, for it's nice for once that we get an awkward and sloppy firefight without the glitz or smoothness that we usually get from Hollywood. Singer redeems himself for SUPERMAN RETURNS.
As for the acting, Cruise obviously cared about VALKYRIE because he didn't bore me at all, unlike say M:I 3. His biggest problem is that his mostly British supporting cast including the likes of Kenneth Branaugh, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, and Bernard Hill all don't have to try to act, unlike Cruise. In other words, Maverick is surrounded by King Henry V, Carmine Falcone, General Zod, Davy Jones, that tranvestite comic, and King Rohan. Maverick becomes Goose in this scenario.
But I felt he did a fine job, the calm-in-control leader performance expected of heroes in most action movies. I did dig that one great scene of his when he's having to struggle with only one hand, and three functioning fingers, to arm his suitcase bomb in under a minute. Also, I bought that moment when with his charm and uniform, he convinces Hitler to sign altered operation plans (designed to defeat Hitler) without reading them.
That or Hitler is a big DAYS OF THUNDER fan, I don't know. Interestingly, U.S. Army students at West Point academy nominated Cruise in VALKYRIE for this year's Cadet's Choice award, which celebrates "a movie character that best exemplifies West Point leadership,"[/i] along with Batman, James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Harvey Milk.
Alot of people don't care for the lack of German accents in VALKYRIE, but you know what? Whither those guys use a foreign tongue or not, they all are still speaking English, so it really doesn't matter at all.. Accent or not, I rather prefer whatever works best for an actor. Take ENEMY AT THE GATES where you had Ed Harris, one of America's great actors, giving essentially a solid performance. Yet he's torpedoed by his horrendous German accent. Then consider Burt Lancaster in THE TRAIN, who's simply friggin badass despite the fact that as a supposed Frenchman, he sounded like a New Yorker.
Some years back, alot of German magazines polled readers asking the best movies of all time, and SCHINDLER'S LIST ranked high on all of them. Now you may ask, why would they cherisha film which basically confronted without any excuses that great national shame-stain that was the Holocaust? If you want my theory, it's probably mostly because the hero Oskar Schindler himself was German.
Not surprisingly, Germany doesn't exactly have many historical figures from that epoch for which to be proud of. These supposed Good Germans of the July 20 plot knew that if they failed, that they would get shot or hanged by fishwire on meathooks or their relatives possibly threatened, but also that they would probably be seen by their countrymen as traitors and bring shame to their families. Much less that their big post-coup Armistice goal was pretty unrealistic. Maybe they accepted that reality, said fuck it and decided to go for it anyway,
And that is why they're heroes in Germany today.