Review of "Valkyrie"

3/10

It must be hard to inject suspense into a movie in which the final outcome is known before the previews even begin. That difficulty, more than anything else, comes through in this film.

Sadly, this "best suspense thriller of the year" was incredibly boring. There were too many characters, all of whom were woefully underdeveloped and one-dimensional. Obviously, one can't provide a back story for every character in a two hour movie, but this movie still needed two or three multifaceted, developed characters. At some point, the filmmakers have to make some choices with regard to focus and scope. This movie felt as though no choices were ever made with regard to focus. All the characters are developed equally, which in this case is not at all. The worst example of this comes in the form of Kenneth Branagh's character, Henning von Tresckow. He is a central character during the first act, but he is soon shipped to the front lines, never to be seen again, except for a brief glimpse at the end of the film during which we see him looking forlorn. But by that point he has ceased to matter to the audience. Most of the secondary characters came across as ineffectual wet blankets, probably as an easy way to highlight the fortitude of Cruise's character.

Something about this movie keeps it from flowing very well. A lot of it seems like random scenes pieced together without any overall narrative vision. The worst part is that this movie concerns a very engaging and emotional historical episode, yet it's an incredibly "by-the-numbers" effort. Some reviews describe it as "clinical" and "procedural," and that's fairly accurate. It plods and stumbles its way to a climax everyone knows is coming, but when it gets there, there is no increase in suspense. Instead, the characters just become even more pathetic as they act like little children trying to blame one another for the lack of coordination in their assassination plot.

This was a sub-par effort considering the director and the great actors involved. Most of them seemed like they phoned it in. It was humorous to see the tone of the advertisements transition from "great suspense thriller" to "entertainment juggernaut." Of course, this movie is neither, but at least the commercials showed the one explosion in the film to bolster their action packed claims.