Being one of the most tragic and darkest periods of the world’s history, Nazi Germany has left a stain on the planet that will arguably never be topped any time soon. In regards to how its shown in media, it always proves to be amazing catharsis to watch any Nazis getting beaten or even killed as a coping mechanism, but that doesn’t mean that cinema has entirely avoided the harsher realism that comes with portraying Nazi Germany in films, with examples like Life is Beautiful, Schindler’s List and many more. But one part of actual history that isn’t that well known was revealed in the 2008 film, Valkyrie. Near the end of the second world war, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (played by Tom Cruise) decides to revolt against the Nazi regime and plots to remove Hitler (played by David Bamber) from power. Joining up with a secret resistance force, Cruise is tasked with taking charge and commencing Operation Valkyrie, which will hopeful rid the Fuhrer of the earth once and for all. Based on the real life- 20 July Plot of 1944 where a group of ex-Nazis plot to kill Hitler, the film offers an interesting bit of history that wasn’t that well known previously. However, with a ton of controversy surrounding its advertising and casting choices, along with a pretty mediocre critical reception, the film was quickly forgotten about and remained in obscurity. This film largely just comes off as dull and boring; taking what should be a thrilling piece of history and making it an annoying stealth mission in a video game.

The director of this movie, Bryan Singer, works in regard to how he presents the sets and scenes for this film, but not so much in upping the emotions to a care-able level. As an overall film, a lot of the scenes lack any sense of urgency or panic, almost like the actors suffer from half-awake syndrome throughout the whole picture. With a movie thats very talk-heavy and really restricted with what it can show with its ties to real-life, there’s not too much to grab onto while watching this movie. While Singer is incapable of producing many movies without a hint of dull sprinkled in somewhere, the film’s aesthetic and atmosphere do feel reminiscent to WW2 Germany. Many of the scenes feel authentic and grand (mostly due to some of the locations being the actual buildings), though the actors are a bit too reserved, the seriousness can work in some scenes, and once and awhile, there is a genuinely effective moment of suspense and tension with how many conversational scenes are paced and shot. The film isn’t lacking story or events to rip from, but it lacks a sense of development or even set-up, the focus is so much on the plan that everything surrounding these character’s lives are never addressed. The film, for the most part, keeps its historical accuracy pretty spot on, outside of a few minor oddities and the influence of Cruise’s character, but this can be felt in how particular and forward many of the missions and planning moments go. Without given too much away, the film doesn’t exactly end on the brightest note, which does match in spirit to the time period, the movie’s tone and the overall real-life event.

To the film’s credit, most of the people they cast for the film look pretty close to their real-life counterparts, ignoring the fact that they clearly have way more American attributes than anything German, but from a storytelling perspective, it’s not too hard to see some of the changes. The thing that does sully their character’s are the lack of depth that any of them have within them; instead of being complex human beings with moral motivations and are forced to make drastic decisions, the film removes a lot of the more touchy negative attributes to many of them to make it a much cleaner good vs evil story, which sucks out of a lot of the intrigue and complexity to this story. Tom Cruise in the leading role came with its fair share of issues, with the German public bashing the choice because of Cruise scientology background. With that aside, the performance he delivers is perfectly acceptable, but lacks any sort of charisma that this person would have needed to do the tasks he did, despite the film pushing him more into a Gary Stu level of importance that the real person never had. Many of the other cast members do fine in their parts, but still suffer from the directing not allowing any of them to speak a semitone above a whisper for a majority of the movie. The only one that stands out, as he probably should, is David Bamber as Hitler himself, who though not in it long, still carries a sense of unease and craziness just watching him on-screen.

Most of the film’s color-palette consists of a lot of greys and blacks, with an occasional glimpse of red to make it feel more alive. While the colors in this kind of movie aren’t the most important aspect in a movie that’s trying to be more grounded in reality, the film’s amount of boring material isn’t complemented with anything that striking visually outside of a few shots of some of the real-life German buildings. The film’s score, composed by John Ottoman who previously worked with Singer with movies like Superman Returns and X-Men, is repeated so often throughout the movie with these very standard tension building notes that it gets very noticeably tiring after its third hearing. Even some of the more sombre or dramatic score can be harkened back to any of his other scores in the other movie he worked on. The writing team behind the movie didn’t have much to do with crafting the plot or even that much of the spoken words it would seem, but it did have a major influence in Cruise’s position in the film, with the two credits coming from one who is involved with practically all of his new work, and one who the film was his first outing as a film writer. This isn’t to say that the dialogue is necessarily bad; it manages to get across the feeling that it wants to and it never feels like its hyping up Cruise’s ego too much in the written worlds, but with how he’s crafted into the story, it can feel a bit more forced.

Valkyrie could have been a cooler more interesting movie if it wasn’t made with the express purpose of not offending anyone or stomping on anyone’s memory. With a great interesting part of history that could have been a unique war piece, the film barely stands out because of its incredibly weak direction and simple storyline and characters. As an actual film, nothing is technical done wrong with it, and with enough competence behind the crew, it produces a fairly forgettable but overall harmless film with some decent actors and a few moments of suspense. For something that takes place within the reign of the Nazi, there should have been a lot more intense, terrifying, and deadly moments within the film, yet the movie stays roughly clean for a majority of the film. When a film is forgettable enough that it makes you forget your main character is missing an eye and a hand, it says something about how long it will remain in your mind. Not the worst war movie ever made, but nothing to write home about, this operation was executed at the wrong time, delivered in a woefully incorrect way, and ended with a horribly quick but utterly empty feeling ‘Bang’!