Do Over: EYG Sunday Morning Revisit Week 8

Around the time when Tom Cruise’s Valkyrie came out, I had not been going to the theater much. Instead, I had been going on Tuesdays to Wal-Mart and picking up DVD copies of new releases, many of which I had never seen. I amassed quite a collection of DVDs and many of them were films that I did not like or had never seen. In fact, there have been several that I never wound up watching. Valkyrie was one that I did watch, but was never engaged with. It has become the next film in the Do Over binge series.

Valkyrie was the story of the final attempt by Germans to assassinate Adolf Hitler. This true story was directed by Bryan Singer and starred Tom Cruise as Colonel Stauffenberg, one of the major architects behind the coup attempt against Hitler and the attempted use of Operation Valkyrie, a national emergency plan to maintain the German government in case of Hitler’s death.

After watching the film for a second time, I found the initial half of the film a little slow and the set-up lacked the intensity of the second half of the film. The second half of the movie, specifically when the bomb went off, increased the level of anxiety and suspense despite the fact that I knew historically the assassination plot had failed. The end of the film was much stronger and compelling.

Tom Cruise is solid as the German Colonel and he was joined by an outstanding cast including Essie Izzard, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terrence Stamp, Carice van Houten, Kevin McNally, David Bamber, Jamie Parker, David Schofield, and Christian Berkel.

While this was a good translation of events, I can’t help but think this could have been more intense and compelling than what we got. It was better than I remembered, but it may not be one that I remember fully movie on.