“Valkyrie” Won’t Manage to Kill at the Box Office, Either
Monday, December 22nd, 2008I wrote awhile back about how ridiculous and desperate I felt it was that Valkyrie was opening on Christmas Day. A friend emailed me later that night to point out that Schindler’s List also opened on Christmas Day. “Somehow,” I told her, “I don’t think this is going to be comparable.”
Here are some excerpts from an early review of this feel-good Hitler-assassinating holiday flick (emphasis mine).
Turns out Cruise is both the central figure in “Valkyrie” and its weakest link. He’s distractingly bad in this, the iconography of his celebrity so strongly overshadowing his performance. He’s just too powerfully contemporary. With his hard, flat American accent, he stands out in every single scene. And he’s not a good enough actor to immerse himself in this kind of period piece, or allow us to do the same. (Then again, if he had affected a German accent – or a British one to blend in among his co-stars – he would have invited derision for that, too. Maybe the guy just can’t win.) … Cruise undermines the potential of “Valkyrie” at every turn. He’s outclassed and outmatched by every member of the strong supporting cast, any of whom would have been more believable as Stauffenberg …
But we never get a sense of inner conflict, of the doubt he may have felt in betraying his duties, of the fear he may have faced in putting himself and his family in danger by going through with the plan. When Stauffenberg states with clenched-jawed, hushed certitude, “We have to kill Hitler,” we’ll just have to take his word for it that he feels strongly about the task he’s about to lead … The whole effort feels rather smoothly detached. The actual bomb-orchestration sequence is well-staged and has a few breathless moments, but a scene that’s supposed to be pivotal and poignant – when Stauffenberg reluctantly thrusts his partially amputated arm in the air and declares “Heil Hitler!” – instead comes off as laughable.
Ouch, ouch, ouch. BIG ouchies there.
I expect my headline here is going to be one of many, many, many jokes made in the next week or two where you basically pair the concept of a failed Hitler assassination with the concept of a failed movie. Collect ‘em all!



















