Mike has mixed feelings about VALKYRIE

It's a happy day for the global community when Hollywood stereotypes are shed. Gone are the days when Germans were the uniformed baddies chasing all-American heroes, blindly following the orders of evil, we have now entered a new era. Now the Germans ARE all-American heroes. That's right, Tom "You can't handle the truth" Cruise plays Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg - a German nobleman who led an audacious attempt to assassinate Hitler. In some ways, bringing in Bryan Singer as director and Tom Cruise as the lead was an ingenious move. It has the obvious benefit of attracting people to a historical drama, a genre not noted for its popularity. It also means the production benefits from two giants of Hollywood action movies, and thus can draw on an illustrious history of blockbusters to make this one a success. More than this though, it offers a route into the spirit of the times through the side door. For you see German military types, particularly those of the nobility who were very proud of their nation, tended to be incredibly bombastic, forthright and generally pretty gung-ho. These attributes tie in perfectly with the kind of all-American action heroes associated with Cruise, and with previous Singer movies like SUPERMAN RETURNS and X-MEN (2). Only characters like Wolverine or Lt. Daniel Kaffee could pull off some of the bold declarations contained in VALKYRIE. Although bizarrely it's British comedian Eddie Izzard who belts out the 'momentum of history' speech you'll no doubt have heard on the trailers. The story itself is amazing subject matter for the movie. Col. Stauffenberg is such an enigmatic character and cuts such a strange figure (all the injuries exhibited in the film really happened) that he makes for an exciting lead. What's more, the assassination itself was not just brave but a stroke of genius, providing superb dramatic material for Singer to work with. There is the political intrigue that allows these men to organise themselves, there's the logistical planning of a complex plot, the arch-villain of the modern world as your bad guy and all this set against a world war. Given all of this it was a great surprise, and a an even bigger disappointment, that the film was pretty dull. It starts off pretty well, throwing out a good war scene and some nice pieces of intrigue to introduce us to Stauffenberg. The development of the scheme wasn't half bad either. But on the whole the movie lacked any real excitement. Part of this is derived from the fact that we know what happens, but that alone is no excuse. It seems to me that VALKYRIE relies too much on tried-and-tested formats to build up both character identification and dramatic tension. The scenes between Stauffenberg and his wife are clearly devised to humanise him, and make us all sympathise with a 'family man' (as if it wasn't easy enough to side with the guy TRYING TO KILL HITLER!!!) and later lines reveal that the early war scene was to be milked as the 'turning point' for him in deciding that war was bad (which he didn't think anyway). More than this though, our belief that this mixture of Anglo-American celebrity talent are contemporary Germans is sorely tested at several points (you'll notice when/if you watch it). The decision to make this bold, Hollywood hero was, as I said earlier, an interesting and bold move but it seems to me that it wasn't followed through properly. If anything Stauffenberg wasn't bold enough, he and his colleagues were too frequently nervous and his enemies too often suspicious without really doing anything about it. This makes the whole film seem forced, and makes certain elements of the assassination attempt seem unbelievable. And whilst the event was almost unbelievable, it did actually happen and is described relatively faithfully by this film. So to make it appear fake is a big problem indeed. For all its flaws, VALKYRIE does look good. The acting, even from Cruise, is sturdy and there are some really well shot scenes (mostly the ones with explosions and fighting). It is also a great story, the retelling of which is a reminder to us all of those heroes in the past who died fighting real evil. The movie just doesn't quite live up to its billing.