Valkyrie

“Only God can judge us now,” says Colonel Claus von Stauf­fen­berg. But then, von Stauf­fen­berg didn’t live to see the inter­net. How do you approach a film like Valkyrie? Do you pre­tend not to have heard the end­less chat­ter? The bad buzz? Do you polite­ly ignore the release date changes? Because make no mis­take: this film was meant to be awful. Tom Cruise as a Nazi? What else could he bring to the role except inevitable failure?

Von Stauf­fen­berg is one of the few Ger­man heroes of World War 2. He led a group of high-rank­ing offi­cers in a dar­ing plot to assas­si­nate Hitler and take con­trol of Berlin. The plan was to blow-up the Führer in his bunker, blame the attack on an SS coup, sev­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions to the out­side world and put ​‘Oper­a­tion Valkyrie’ into effect; a stand­ing order that would give the nation­al guard the author­i­ty to seize con­trol of key areas, while the plot­ters qui­et­ly installed a rev­o­lu­tion­ary gov­ern­ment that would end the war.

What hubris, then, for the all-Amer­i­can Cruise to appro­pri­ate – no, steal! – this role for him­self. And espe­cial­ly at a time when the Ger­mans them­selves have been knock­ing out supe­ri­or, sub­ver­sive war films, from Down­fall to The Coun­ter­feit­ers. They have the infra­struc­ture, the tal­ent and the right; what does Tom Cruise have? The name and the cheque­book. For over a year now the knives have been sharp­ened: Valkyrie was so bad, so doomed, so utter­ly ill-con­ceived that it was going to destroy Cruise, bring down Unit­ed Artists and leave Sci­en­tol­ogy itself in ash­es. Oh, and it’s respon­si­ble for the cred­it crunch, too.

But this nar­ra­tive for­gets two things. The first is that the direc­tor, Bryan Singer, is a past mas­ter of edge-of-the-seat film­mak­ing. The sec­ond, more con­tro­ver­sial­ly, is that Tom Cruise is a stu­pen­dous­ly charis­mat­ic movie star and an actor of proven pedi­gree. Put the two of them togeth­er and what do you think you’re going to get?

A dis­as­ter? Well, no, sor­ry. Valkyrie may not be awards bait but it is a sol­id, at times grip­ping, thriller that wrings every ounce of dra­ma out of what is, at heart, a pul­sat­ing tale of the courage and ide­al­ism of some undone by the cow­ardice and pol­i­tics of others.

There are, of course, prob­lems – most obvi­ous­ly with the cast­ing. The Ger­man high com­mand is a Who’s Who of British thes­ps includ­ing Ken­neth Bran­gah, Tom Wilkin­son, Ter­ence Stamp, Bill Nighy and (ahem) Eddie Izzard. It’s as if an elite RADA class has been tak­en hostage by the Nazis. But the film­mak­ers do their best to move us past the dis­cor­dance between what we’re see­ing and what we’re hear­ing. In a neat trick, the film begins with the Ger­man ​‘Walküre’ mor­ph­ing into ​‘Valkyrie’, while Cruise begins his voiceover in Ger­man before switch­ing to Eng­lish. It’s not the most ele­gant of solu­tions, but it works if you’re pre­pared to take a leap of imagination.

At its best, Valkyrie is an expert­ly assem­bled and tight­ly edit­ed nail-biter (the stag­ing of the attack is a dra­mat­ic mas­ter­class), although Singer is a lit­tle too wed­ded to the glossy sheen of his block­buster work. He’s a lit­tle too slick, a lit­tle too pol­ished and odd­ly coquet­tish. Hitler is approached oblique­ly; Singer’s vision of the Führer in his eyrie at Bercht­es­gaden sur­round­ed by his high com­mand lacks punch, like some­thing Edward Hop­per might have paint­ed if the Nazis had won the war.

And Cruise? Cruise is… Cruise. Com­mand­ing, focussed, ener­getic, pro­ject­ing a per­for­mance that man­ages – just – to get beyond the cos­tume that clothes but doesn’t con­fine him. There’s also a real fris­son in watch­ing him take a bul­let. Exact­ly why, though, is some­thing every­one will have their own answer for.