Rating of
3/4
"Valkyrie" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 02/10/12
Anyone who has seen The Desert Fox will be familiar with this story, but instead of concentrating on Rommel, it examines the role of Claus Von Stauffenberg in the plot to assassinate Hitler after many of his officers began to question not only his tactics but his sanity. The theme of the two films is actually very similar; to show that not all of the German military or its people were Nazis, and there were some who were willing to sacrifice their lives to try and stop him. For me the most interesting part of the film takes place after the bombing when a plan is implemented to take over Berlin and I had no idea how far it went into effect and how close it came to succeeding; I can't help but wonder how different the world would be now if Olbricht had shown a bit more backbone or the meeting hadn't been moved to an outside location. From a technical point of view, it's unsurprisingly very solid, with classy direction from Bryan Singer and quality performances all round, although as usual it is very difficult to divorce tiny Tom from his screen persona. In all it's a very interesting history lesson that inevitably suffers from the fact that we all know how the story is going to play out and suffers in comparison to the gut wrenching intensity of Downfall. A good, solid war film nonetheless.
