Scott Mendelson: Review: Valkyrie (2008)

Valkyrie 2008 120 minutes rated PG-13 by Scott Mendelson Films that are based on true stories of failure and/or disaster can often make superior suspense yarns then those whose outcome is theoretically unknown. If the film can trick the audience into forgetting that they know the story already, it is a sure sign that all is well. Furthermore, tension can be explicitly built into the foreknowledge of doom, where the suspense comes not from 'will it all go wrong?' but rather 'how will it all go wrong?'. A bit of plot: Bryan Singer's period suspense tale Valkyrie concerns the last of over a dozen separate plots to assassinate Adolf Hitler during the reign of the Third Reich. The plot that is presented here is unique because it was the only one that specifically dealt with what to do after Der Führer had been killed. Colonel Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) has just been seriously wounded on the battlefield in Africa near the end of the war. Fed up with Hitler's various tyrannical misdeeds, at ... (link)