Valkyrie

Valkyrie (2008)

Valkyrie is a brilliant film, honestly because of the supporting cast and the story. Tom Cruise has played his role with full conviction and intensity.

You can almost forget that he’s in the movie if you can appreciate the performances of Bill Nighy, Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp, and other actors who play the chief conspirators, including Eddie Izzard, and Christian Berkel.

The story is straight forward, detailing the last of 15 known assassination attempts against Adolf Hitler.

Claus von Stauffenberg, a man famous for being a German Army Officer who came closest to a assassinating Adolf Hitler. Von Stauffenberg is the closest figure Germany has to a national hero during World War 2.

During World War II, Wehrmacht Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is severely wounded in Tunisia, and is evacuated home to Nazi Germany.

Meanwhile, Major General Henning von Tresckow attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler by smuggling a bomb aboard the Führer’s private airplane. The bomb, however, fails to detonate and Tresckow safely retrieves it to conceal his intentions. After learning that the Gestapo has arrested General Hans Oster, he orders General Olbricht to find a replacement

. After recruiting von Stauffenberg into the German Resistance, Olbricht delivers von Stauffenberg to a meeting of the secret committee which has coordinated previous attempts on Hitler’s life. The members include General Ludwig Beck, Dr. Carl Goerdeler , and Erwin von Witzleben. The Colonel is stunned to learn that no plans exist for after Hitler’s assassination.

After a bombing raid on Berlin, he lights upon using the plan Operation Valkyrie, which involves the deployment of the Reserve Army to maintain order in the event of a national emergency. The plotters carefully redraft the plan so that they can dismantle the Nazi regime after assassinating Hitler, by overthrowing the SS and imprisoning Hitler’s closest advisors.

Realizing that only General Fromm, the head of the Reserve Army, can initiate Valkyrie, they offer him a position as head of the Wehrmacht in a Post-Nazi Germany and recruit him into the fold: however, Fromm initially refuses. With the rewritten plan needing to be signed off by Hitler himself, von Stauffenberg visits the Führer at his Berghof estate in Bavaria. In the presence of his inner circle, Hitler praises von Stauffenberg’s heroism in North Africa not realizing the Colonel’s true intentions.

I’d recommend …… Buy this one!!