Tom Wilkinson

Kenneth Branagh

Bill Nighy

Eddie Izzard

Terence Stamp

Carice van Houten

Here are the main reasons why Valkyrie received initial bad press and ultimately kept people from considering it for awards:

Tom Cruise is wearing an eye-patch

The film’s release date kept moving around

The film is loaded with factual errors/continuity errors/etc.

A truck-load of extras were injured during filming

The film actors speak in English rather than German

Many of the actors speak in English but with a German accent

The film is too violent for its PG-13 Rating

The film should have showed more verisimilitude and taken the R Rating

The film’s budget was nearly a 100 million thus causing expectations unmet

Tom Cruise has misbehaved over the last few years

All of the above is true. And more.

Here’s another take. Tom Cruise recently said that he just wants to entertain people. Is this an entertaining film? It is. In fact, like most Bryan Singer films, it is exquisitely paced. Bryan Singer is the kind of director that never seems to make a bad choice on where to set his camera. He understands how to build momentum, and how to wring every ounce of suspense out of a single scene. There is a particular scene that sticks out. One of the Valkyrie plotters (Tom Wilkinson) thinks he may have been discovered. He goes to a meeting unsure as to whether he will be killed. There is an insert shot of a gun on the table. There is a look on the man’s face opposite him. An oblique exchange of dialogue ensues. He discerns he has not been discovered. He escapes and continues to tweak the Valkyrie plot. Singer, and his actors, know what they are doing here.

The cast reads like a who’s who in actors with ability—but little U.S. name recognition. These are actors who win awards and yet are little known to the masses. Nighy, Stamp, Wilkinson. So herein lies the rub: a film with a high budget, purposely cut for a mass audience PG-13 Rating, a Tom Cruise starrer…peopled by “British Actors” and covering an historical topic of little repute. Mix in the above list of questionable errors and decisions and you have a film that has garnered little critical success and is struggling to recoup its budget.

But Valkyrie is highly watchable. In fact one might say that Tom Cruise is often in films that are highly watchable. He is neither bad nor great in most of them, including this one. But have you ever noticed that when Tom Cruise does a small role in a film he is often the most watchable part? His roles in Magnolia, Tropic Thunder, and Austin Powers in Goldmember all come to mind.

Most importantly this film answers, in visuals, that question that so often nags at us: Did anyone try to stop Hitler? The answer is yes, yes, yes. And for Valkyrie to be this watchable, this entertaining, when we all know the film’s obvious outcome speaks very highly of its overall craft.

Bottom Line: 3.5/5.0