Mission Failed: Operation Valkyrie

How do you make a thriller, the climax of which is obvious? How do you make a movie based on that one day which could have changed the history of the world, and consequently the present we now live in?

The challenges of this movie are obvious, and to face this daunting task are Bryan Singer, the director of the X-Men franchise and Tom Cruise.

Everyone knows that Hitler committed suicide, when the war was nearing its end, many know that attempts were made on Hitler's life, but only a few (World War 2 buffs for sure) know of perhaps the one plot that came very close to overthrowing Hitler.

At the centre of the story is Cornel Claus von Stauffenber (Tom Crusie), a man who along with a few could not tolerate the havoc Hitler was causing and thus decided to take matters in one's own hand. Operation Valkyrie was the result of this.

Though this historical thriller has its moments, the suspense which is so necessary in one is obviously missing. (We all know Hitler didn't die and Operation Valkyrie obviously failed.) The movie picks up with the second half as a flurry of actions take place, with Hitler's supposed death, the SS and its top leadership being taken prisoners, and the Operation appearing successful at the face of it.

However, the movie lacks soul. It is a movie of military strategies and board-room planned coups, and lacks, apart from one blast that supposedly kills Hitler, the humanness that could have lifted the film.

Driving this movie is an eye-patch wearing, curly-haired Tom Cruise, who gives a fine, typically energetic performance, but all along one cannot help but realise that there is something amiss. Stauffenber was man who lost an eye, an entire hand and a few fingers at war, a man torn between his loyalty to the Reich and thus the Fuhrer, and humanity.

He was one with many layers, much deeper than the one portrayed on screen. If Tom Cruise doesn't work as that enigma of a man, it is possibly because Cruise is too modern, too American, way too Tom Crusie.

What looks jarring is Singer's penchant for detail and exaggeration. What the movie lacks is those raw edges, period movies like these require. His use of low shot angles, eerie music, whenever Hitler appears or a thrilling moment is to take place (like the one where Hitler is about to sign an amendment that Cruise hopes to use it to overthrow Hitler), is often too detailed, too meticulously done and exaggerated, making the movie lack that roughness it so needed.

And none, except for Hitler and some of his loyal troops have German accents. Cruise and his friends speak like Americans, often rendering the movie a strange cacophony of accents.

It is a movie of a few thrills, and half-decent performance. Not so bad, not so great either. What it lacks is soul.