Valkyrie

Valkyrie movie review: In Nazi Germany during World War II, as the tide turned in favor of The Allies, a cadre of senior German officers and politicians desperately plot to topple the Nazi regime before the nation is crushed in a near-inevitable defeat. To this end, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, an Army officer convinced he must save Germany from Hitler, is recruited to mastermind a real plan. To do so, he arranges for the internal emergency measure, Operation: Valkyrie, to be changed to enable his fellows to seize control of Berlin after the assassination of the Fuhrer.

The buzz: What, you don’t believe the all-American Cruise—who also executive produced—can pull off playing a WWII-era German? Despite the appearance of some possibly unintentional laughs, “Valkyrie” at least comes from director Bryan Singer (“X2”), who’s no slouch around an action sequence.

The verdict: Talk about casting sabotage. While “Valkyrie” is already filled with largely varied accents, Cruise’s complete non-Germanness is so distracting that it seems like the rest of the cast is thinking, “Who let this guy in?” It would have been only slightly more ridiculous to cast him as Hitler. Singer's direction solidifies the courage needed to disobey such an imposing government—ideas that prevent “Valkyrie” from becoming a complete joke. But the film doesn't clarify the different roles of Stauffenberg and his accomplices, the national temperature at the time or the death and destruction that’s occurring as the plot’s unfolding. Without a sense of reality or history, a too-basic sense of good and evil and a few accidental chuckles, “Valkyrie” is simultaneously serious and goofy. It plays like the wrong product in the right package, as if someone slipped barbecue sauce in the ketchup bottle. Source: Metromix

Box Office: As of April 13, 2009, the film has grossed $83,079,000 in the United States and Canada and an estimated $117,198,951 in other territories for a worldwide gross of $200,276,784.

• Wikipedia: Valkyrie
• Official movie site: Valkyrie