Merrick here...


..with a look at VALKYRIE from my man Mastidon, who saw it last weekend at BNAT.


Here's what he had to say...

Hi Guys,

Mastidon here again. I wasn't planning on writing a review on VALKYRIE since Merritcat wrote one (HERE) from her unique point of view as the only German attending. However, I realized that I too at BNAT had a very unique point of view as the only American attending who has lived in Germany for the past 9 years.

Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Christopher McQuarrie & Nathan Alexander
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Eddie Izzard, and Terrance Stamp
Opens: Dec. 25 USA, Jan. 22 Germany, Jan. 23 UK
Rating: 4 1/2 stars out of 5

OK, I want to start off and get the obvious issue out of the way. I think Tom Cruise is a fucking nutbag. Need I say more? But I think on rare occasions he can act. BORN ON THE 4TH OF JULY was by far his best example of this but who among us in the geek community doesn't like RISKY BUSINESS? Or JERRY MAGUIRE? I can't imagine anyone else starring in any of those movies. Let me draw a BNAT parallel. Now by no means am I saying Tom is 1/10 as good an actor as this man as he still stands as one of the greatest actors of all time, but he was a fucking nut. And unlike Tom whose Scientology space crap dose not directly cause people sadness, this guy would come to your town and piss in your face right after the moment you lost somebody you love. Yes, this can only be Charlton Heston. I personally think he was not only a fucking nut, but a hurtful son of a bitch who hopefully is burning in hell as I type this. That said, do I not love PLANET OF THE APES or think BEN HUR was not one of the greatest movies of all time? Of course not. I could not imagine anybody else in those roles. So cut Tom a little slack. He has proven he can act sometimes. And just because he is a fucking nut that is no reason to shun this GREAT film.

So why is it great? You know the ending going in. You know they failed. Hitler lived. Big spoiler, right? It is great because Bryan Singer is the perfect director to keep up suspense combined with pulling the best performances out of people. USUAL SUSPECTS anyone? HOUSE? And maybe he did not quiet nail SUPERMAN RETURNS to your geek pleasure, but he certainly nailed this one. And in the process, he shows you key pieces of the story that I never knew about even though we were taught about this in my middle school in New Jersey. He did the research, he put in the time and fought with the German government to shoot the film where it needed to be shot and not on some soundstage with a CGI Berlin but in the real locations. Singer took every care to make sure it was historically accurate from the costumes and sets to the script. In short, he took the care that needed to be done to do this story justice.

About the accent issue, I agree with the way it is handled. Take a great distinguished Shakespearean actor like Kenneth Branagh and have him put on a fake German accent? It doesn't work. Or take the other extreme of CHE and have everything done in German with subtitles? Then the amount of people to see this film would be far less. Singer's compromise is to start off with Cruises narration in German with subtitles and slowly fade to English. This is the only way I can see doing it with still keeping the film commercial.

There are so many fascinating little bits to this story of how it all came down such as the German signaling office sending both sets of messages. It is a intriguing look at how easy it was for a small group of people who nearly brought down the Nazi regime. Imagine how many lives would have been saved or what the state of the world would have been like today? Merritcat's uncle died in the last weeks and days of the war. He would have bee alive today as he was 20 when he died. In the late '50s and early '60s a large Turkish population moved to Germany to help rebuild it as migrant workers. Most are still there today. None of this would have been necessary had Valkyrie succeeded. I can tell you from my own personal experience that Germans even today do not like to make waves. They will rarely question authority and will follow orders. This is what makes what these men did even that much more surprising and shocking. This is a story that everyone needs to know.

This film is one of Singer's best works. It shows that he has grown as a director from not only expertly telling a fictional story but to take a factual one and make it intriguing and entertaining. You will be doing yourself a disservice if you avoid it. I can only tell you from my own personal experiences that this is an important film and should be on your radar to see if not in the cinema but sometime soon.

Until the next time....

Ciao,

-Mastidon