Lone Survivor

Lone Survivor - Dir. Peter Berg (2013)

Operation Red Wing was a 2005 military operation in which a four man SEAL team stationed in Afghanistan was tasked with eliminating Ahmad Shah, a high-level Taliban target. The mission went tragically awry and only Marcus Luttrell survived to tell the tale. Another sixteen troops were killed when their helicopter was shot down during an attempted rescue. Along with novelist Patrick Robinson, Luttrell co-authored Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of Seal Team 10, his account of the undertaking, which was quickly optioned by writer/director/producer Peter Berg, who was coming off the box office flop of Battleship.

In Lone Survivor, Luttrell, a hospital corpsman, is assigned the mission along with team leader Lt. Michael Murphy (Taylor Kitsch), communications specialist Danny Dietz (Emile Hirsch), and sniper Matthew Axelson (Ben Foster). The SEALs are dropped into the mountainous Hindu Kush region, but are eventually spotted by an elderly goat herder and two young boys. The SEALs choose to release them, despite knowing the civilians will alert Taliban forces to their presence. Sure enough, they are on the run, severely outnumbered and outgunned.

With a title like Lone Survivor, there's little doubt left to the ending, even if you aren't familiar with the real-life events. However, it's the journey that's important and Lone Survivor takes us on one harrowing ride. The film begins innocuously enough as the protagonists enjoy their down time by discussing wedding gifts, kitchen tiles, and hazing the new guy. Once the action begins, it almost never lets up as the movie becomes an extended firefight.

Berg is no stranger to kinetic action as seen in 2007's The Kingdom, which helped him earn credibility with Luttrell. Berg drops you right into the thick of things without relying heavily on the shaky cam that so many American directors employ. Yes, there are handheld shots, but not enough to make you confused as to what's happening on screen. He makes you feel every bone breaking hit when the SEALs tumble down a mountainside. And Berg doesn't shy away from the gorier bits as a bullet rips through a man's body in slow motion.

The acting is on point, particularly the always intense Ben Foster. The leads are called upon to convey distinct personalities with very little material. Berg doesn't attempt to shoehorn in back stories for each character; he's only interested in the here and now.

This being a Hollywood production, Lone Survivor does embellish the events for dramatic purposes. The film sees Luttrell's unit facing an enemy force of over a hundred while military reports list the number as anywhere from a dozen to the thirties. While Luttrell found safe harbor in a Pashtun village, the climatic shootout against Shah and his men never happened.

Lone Survivor is a realistic and brutal portrayal of war. It's gripping and action-packed while remaining respectful to those who lived and died during the actual events.

Rating: *** (*****)

Coriolanus

Coriolanus - Dir. Ralph Fiennes (2011)

Before him, he carries noise and behind him he leaves tears.

Death, that dark spirit, in his nervy arm doth lie

Which, being advanced, declines, and then men die.

Some of Shakespeare's most renowned plays have been adapted many times over and modernized re-imaginings are nothing new. Baz Lurhmann transported Romeo and Juliet to Miami and set their tragic romance to an alternative rock soundtrack. Ian McKellan set his version of Richard III in a 1930's England that resembled Nazi Germany. That particular film is the closest in spirit to Coriolanus, which marks the directorial debut of Ralph Fiennes. This is also the first time Coriolanus, based off the purported life of a real Roman general, has been translated to the big screen.

An opening title placard states that the story is set in a "place called Rome" though it was shot on location in Belgrade. Fiennes is Caius Martius, a leading general in the military charged with the protection of the city. He leads a successful campaign against its enemies, the Volscians, led by Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler). He returns home to the love of his wife, Virgilia (Jessica Chastain) and his fiercely patriotic mother, Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave). The city's leaders heap adoration upon Martius and bestow upon him the honorific title, Coriolanus, after the Volscian city he conquered. His close friend, Menenius (Brian Cox), advises Coriolanus to go into politics. However, his quick temper and open disdain for the common people turn out to be his undoing. Opposing senators Brutus (Paul Jesson) and Sicinius (James Nesbitt) undermine Coriolanus by whipping the masses into a frenzy against him and force the government to banish him. Seeking revenge, he allies himself with Aufidius to lead the Volscian army against the city that spurned him.

It's a testament to Shakespeare that a play written in the 1600's as commentary for the discontent of the government in his era still remains relevant to this day. Fiennes has captured these themes in all their gritty detail. The setting of bombed out buildings will instantly bring to mind the war-torn countries of Serbia, Bosnia, as well as those in the Middle East. An opening protest by the plebeians has echoes of the political unrest in places like Egypt and Libya as well as the Occupy movement. There's an immediacy to these sequences thanks to Fiennes' direction and the cinematography of Barry Ackroyd, who shot United 93, Green Zone, and The Hurt Locker. The screenplay by John Logan (Gladiator) maintains a fine balance between modernity and the florid language of Shakespeare. Logan and Fiennes even manage to incorporate CNN-esque news updates as a Greek chorus.

To no one's surprise, Fiennes is excellent in the title role (which he previously played on stage), infusing a quiet fury to Coriolanus while going big in a theatrical manner when necessary. Gerard Butler is all sound and fury as the antagonistic Aufidius in a similar performance to King Leonidas in 300. It's a treat to watch Fiennes and Butler in a battle of snarling rage. Vanessa Redgrave's Volumnia won't be winning any mother of the year awards. She isn't overtly malevolent, but more of an aristocratic stage mom. She would rather have a dozen dead sons who died defending their country than one who lived a long life in anonymity. The supporting cast also includes the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain, who seemed to appear in practically every film in 2011. Her part is disappointingly brief and not nearly as meaty as her roles in Take Shelter or The Tree of Life.

Make you a sword of me.

There can be a disconnect when you attempt to place the poetic words of Shakespeare into a contemporary setting, especially one involving televisions and cell phones. This isn't the case with Coriolanus. The language of the Bard flows from the tongues of the cast without feeling artificial or hokey. Ralph Fiennes makes a powerful directorial debut that stands as a parable for the hot button issues of today.

Rating: *** (*****)

War Horse

War Horse - Dir. Steven Spielberg (2011)

It's been three years since Steven Spielberg's last directorial effort in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He returned with a vengeance at the end of 2011 with his two latest pictures hitting theaters within days of each other. They couldn't be any more different. The first was The Adventures of Tintin, a kinetic boys' adventure utilizing the latest in motion capture animation and released in 3D. The other, War Horse, is an old-fashioned epic shot in 35mm that references numerous Hollywood classics.

War Horse is based on a 1982 children's novel by Michael Morpurge, which was adapted into an award-winning stage play in 2007. Spielberg attended a show and was inspired to turn it into a movie with help from screenwriters Richard Curtis (Bridget Jones' Diary, Love Actually) and Lee Hall (Billy Elliot). Each permutation chronicles the events of World War I as seen through the eyes of a courageous horse.

The film opens in Dover, England with Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) enraptured by a newly born colt. Albert lives in a farmhouse with his mother Rose (Emily Watson) and father Ted (Peter Mullan), a Boer War veteran trying to wash away his traumatic memories with alcohol. Ted rashly purchases the colt for triple his worth mainly to spite his overbearing landlord (David Thewlis), who rightly points out that the horse is too small to plow fields. It was born for show, not work. However, a determined Albert bonds with the newly named Joey and gets him to plow their rocky land. When a rainstorm washes away their crops, Ted has no choice but to sell Joey to the British army in order to pay their overdue rent.

Joey is put into the care of Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston) and marches into battle alongside Maj. Stewart (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his black stallion Topthorn. After a failed charge against a German regiment, the horses are put into the care of two underage boys, Gunther (David Kross from The Reader) and Michael (Leonard Carow) serving in that same unit. From there, Joey and Topthorn wind up in the possession of an ailing French farm girl (Celine Buckens) and her doting grandfather (Niels Arestrup). Meanwhile, Albert enlists in the military as soon as he comes of age hoping to be reunited with his beloved friend.

War Horse represents Steven Spielberg at his best and his worst. It is an extremely well-crafted film gorgeously shot by Janusz Kaminski. The visuals are impeccable with numerous striking shots that capture the horrors of war and the beauty of the era. War Horse begins in an idyllic countryside that Spielberg has accentuated and romanticized in the way John Ford did with the countries of Wales in How Green Was My Valley and Ireland in The Quiet Man. The film culminates with a beautiful shot of silhouetted figures against a blazing orange sunset ala Gone with the Wind. Another shot features a battlefield strewn with the corpses of soldiers and horses which also recalls that same picture.

Spielberg can't help but go for the jugular when it comes to the film's most emotional moments. No heartstring is safe as Spielberg puts children and animals in peril in an attempt to wring every tear from every eye in the audience. If you didn't know how to feel about a certain scene, John Williams' overwhelming and hammy score will make sure to tell you. One of the best sequences in War Horse is an episode where Joey runs over and through the British trenches and gets tangled up by barbed wire in no man's land. One soldier from both sides declares a temporary truce to cut him loose. It's a touching moment, but Spielberg can't end the scene without the German calling Joey a "remarkable horse." This is a point Spielberg feels needs to be hammered home every fifteen minutes.

The acting is solid with Spielberg putting together an excellent cast of English and European thespians. Jeremy Irvine doesn't make much of an impression as Albert and he tends to overplay it during the more emotional moments. Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch turn in solid performances as the stiff upper lip British officers. The best performance in the film belongs to Peter Mullen as Albert's defeated father. Mullen probably isn't familiar to most American audiences, but he's appeared in darker, powerhouse roles in The Red Riding Trilogy and Paddy Considine's directorial debut Tyrannosaur.

War Horse attempts to be a treatise on the brutality of war as well as an uplifting family friendly drama and Spielberg has a difficult time blending the two. The episodic nature means the tone changes from All Quiet on the Western Front to National Velvet without notice. Maybe I'm cynical, but Spielberg's saccharine sentimentality didn't play well with me.

Rating: ** ½ (*****)

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker - Dir. Kathryn Bigelow (2009)


"The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." – Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

American audiences have been reticent in rushing out to see movies depicting war and the current political climate. Not surprising, since they’ve more than gotten their fair share in the daily news. The majority of these films (Stop-Loss, Rendition) have fallen flat on their face. The Hurt Locker, a refreshingly apolitical take on the subject matter, is not one of them. It is a great deal things, a taut drama, a splendid action movie, and, perhaps, the best depiction of the Iraqi War to date.

Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and SPC Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) are members of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) unit deployed during the early stages of the invasion in 2004. Their team leader, SSgt. Thompson (Guy Pearce), is killed in the opening moments by an IED (improvised explosive device). He is replaced by SFC Will James (Jeremy Renner) who isn’t afraid to literally get his hands dirty when defusing explosive devices. He tosses aside his protective suit at one point proclaiming, ”If I’m gonna die, I want to die comfortable.” In the aftermath of a bombing, he rushes off into the night to go after the perpetrators.

His recklessness immediately puts him into conflict with his comrades. Sanborn is by-the-books and with a little over a month left in their tour of duty only wants to get home in one piece. Eldridge is traumatized following Thompson’s death and carries the guilt over not pulling the trigger on the insurgent detonating the bomb.

James is not the typical maladjusted combat veteran. Yes, he is more at home on the battlefield than he is shopping for breakfast cereal with his wife (Evangeline Lilly) and son. Yes, he is something of an adrenaline junkie. But, he’s not callous. He’s simply learned to deal with the life-or-death situations in an emotionally detached manner. James tugs on a wire to find it attached to seven other bombs buried in the sand. With clinical precision, he simply yanks the connecting wires loose. He keeps a box of mementos under his bed, matter-of-factly explaining they are pieces of the devices that have almost killed him. As James, Jeremy Renner gives a star-making performance. There is an eerie calmness to his man trying to stay sane in an insane world.

One of the few female directors working in the action genre, Kathryn Bigelow, has a better grip of the on-screen happenings than most of her overpaid mail counterparts. She has already helmed a trio of underrated films in Near Dark, Strange Days, and Point Break (yes, Point Break) and she’s finally receiving well-deserved accolades for Hurt Locker. The film was shot on location in Jordan and Kuwait with four 16mm cameras covering the production. There’s immediacy and a sustained tension underlying throughout the movie.

Is it a perfect film? Far from it, the screenplay by former embedded journalist Mark Boal drifts off tangent from time to time. The most jarring subplot involves James’ befriending of a local Iraqi boy selling bootleg DVDs. Real-life veterans have criticized the inaccuracies in combat scenarios. Criticisms aside, The Hurt Locker is still one of the best war movies made by Hollywood and easily one of the best pictures of 2009.

Rating: ***

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds - Dir. Quentin Tarantino (2009)

”…And when the Germans close their eyes at night and their subconscious tortures them for the evil they’ve done, it will be with thoughts of us that it tortures them with…Sound good?”

Quentin Tarantino has dabbled in a variety of genres and given each his own unique stamp. He’s tackled the heist film (Reservoir Dogs), the gangster pic (Pulp Fiction), blaxploitation (Jackie Brown), the drive-in B-movie (Death Proof) and though he only wrote the screenplay, Tarantino has stated that True Romance was his take on the love story. Kill Bill was his stab at the martial arts epic and Spaghetti Western. Now, Tarantino adds his signature to the war movie with the long in development, Inglourious Basterds. More specifically, I’m speaking of the ‘bunch of guys go on a mission during World War 2’ subgenre, taking inspiration from similar films like The Dirty Dozen and Enzo G. Castellari’s original Inglorious Bastards.

With scars around his neck and a country fried hillbilly accent, Brad Pitt becomes Lt. Aldo Raine, the commander of a Jewish unit dropped into enemy territory. Their mission is to kill every Nazi they find. Known as the Bastards, Lt. Raine’s company has put the fear of God into the enemy due to their brutal methods including scalping their victims and carving Swastikas into the lucky few who escape. Also in Lt. Raine’s unit are Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Hostel director Eli Roth), a baseball bat wielding Bostonian, and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), a former German soldier imprisoned for murdering Gestapo officers in their sleep. Two unlikely members of the Bastards are B.J. Novak (best known as Ryan on The Office) and the 5’4 Samm Levine from Freaks & Geeks.

Though the Bastards are the title characters of Tarantino’s picture and the centerpiece of the film’s advertising, they really aren’t the main characters. In fact, many of the Bastards disappear without much word about their fates. The lion’s share of the attention belongs to Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish fugitive who survived the massacre of her family, and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), nicknamed the Jew Hunter. Having a nickname like that, it’s easy to guess who the villain of the piece is. Shoshanna is the heart of the film and there’s real heartbreak and tragedy throughout her arc. Inglourious Basterds opens with the chilling account of Col. Landa discovering her family’s hiding place underneath the floorboards of a French dairy farm.

Has there ever been a movie villain like Hans Landa? Someone so deliciously evil? The late-Heath Ledger blew audiences away with his Joker and the little known Christoph Waltz appears to be doing the same with his Landa. This is a multi-faceted character that goes beyond simple mustache twirling. His Landa greets you with a smile and friendly chit-chat and somehow it’s both humorous and unnerving. He possesses a disarming charm that actually makes you like him one minute, but then he does something monstrous and you remember he’s a fucking Nazi. Landa is also smart, quite possibly the smartest guy in the movie. His intellect and deductive abilities remind one of Sherlock Holmes and Tarantino plays those allusions up when Landa pulls out a comically large pipe.

As the Bastards cut through the Nazi ranks, Shoshanna has made her way to Paris where she now owns and operates a movie theater. The venue was left to her by an “aunt” who was to be played by Maggie Cheung before her scenes were excised from the final cut. Laurent actually learned how to operate a projector for her role and even screened a print of Reservoir Dogs along with trailers and cartoons. Much to Shoshanna’s chagrin, she is pursued romantically by an overzealous German soldier named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who has become the subject of his own picture after killing hundreds of American soldiers single-handedly. The Nazi high command (including Hitler) will screen the film at Shoshanna’s theater. It is here that both she and the Bastards make their plans to assassinate Hitler and all his cronies.

While Inglourious Basterds is nominally a war movie, Tarantino once again throws in a heavy dash of the Spaghetti Western into the mix. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he fills Basterds’ score with compositions by Ennio Morricone and other pieces culled from Westerns such as The Alamo and The Big Gundown. The film’s opening chapter feels just like a prologue out of a Sergio Leone movie and is packed with Western iconography from its title (“Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France”) to a John Ford-style shot through the doorway. During a jailbreak sequence, the Bastards emerge from their hiding spots in a scene reminiscent of the way Henry Fonda and his men were revealed in Once Upon a Time in the West. He finds inspiration of a different sort in a projecting booth shoot-out that ends in a fashion that draws obvious allusions to John Woo’s The Killer.

No matter who Tarantino casts, sometimes the real star of his films is the dialogue. Often, Tarantino’s penchant for pop culture references and long conversations derail the actual plot and come off as self-indulgent. Take a look at the never ending breakfast conversation in Death Proof for a perfect example of that. You’re just waiting for them to shut up so we can get to the car chase. Here, Tarantino leaves you wanting more. He writes his characters like real, three-dimensional characters rather than characters that sound like they’re written by Tarantino, if that makes any sense. Yes, a few times the dialogue could have been easily trimmed, but the majority of the time, he’s able to weave the words in a way that builds the kind of tension I haven’t felt at the movies in a long time. He finds incredibly clever ways to juggle the various languages (French, German, English) that once again works to enhance the overall story. The titular Bastards are the only ones who feel one-dimensional, but that’s not a knock at all. They are cartoon characters (especially Brad Pitt), but damned if they aren’t entertaining.

Writing and directing a period piece certainly helped in reining in Tarantino though he still manages to make plenty of other references that fit the time period and the story. Shoshanna’s theater, for example, screens films from directors like G.W. Pabst and Henri-Georges Clouzot. He also manages to drop in the obligatory references to Leni Riefenstahl.

Despite all the scalping and machine gunning, the film’s highlight for me was a sequence involving Michael Fassbender (fresh off his amazing performance in Hunger) as Sgt. Archie Hicox, a stiff-upper lip British paratrooper and former film critic; Mike Myers under heavy make-up as his commanding officer, and veteran Rod Taylor in a quick cameo as Winston Churchill. There was just something so joyous to this film geek about hearing these men explain UFA in hoity toity aristocratic accents.

Tarantino does get a little too cute with a pair of anachronistic moments. He uses a 70’s style title to introduce Stiglitz that was actually rather amusing. Tarantino also chooses David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” for a sequence with Shoshanna getting all dolled up (applying her own brand of war paint) for the film premiere. The song is the theme from Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People, a film only Tarantino could like.

Even at a length of two and a half hours, Inglourious Basterds feels like an appetizer for a much bigger film. I don't think QT has ever been able to manipulate the wide range of emotions that he does with Basterds. He brings the action and the funny while never letting us forget the tragic ugliness of war. He's made a fantastic hybrid of the war & Western genres that alternately acts as a love letter to movies, one where two of its heroes are a film critic and a film projectionist. Imagine Cinema Paradiso with machine guns and explosions. Tarantino has already mentioned the possibility of a prequel to flesh out the backgrounds of the Bastards. Whether or not this project will ever see the light of day or fall to the wayside (i.e. The Vega Brothers, Kill Bill anime prequel) remains to be seen. This is easily one of Tarantino’s best films and one of the best releases of 2009.

Also in the picture are the gorgeous Diane Kruger as actress/spy Bridget Von Hammersmark and in voice-over cameos by Samuel L. Jackson (as the narrator) and Harvey Keitel (as Lt. Raine’s commanding officer).

Rating: ****

Defiance

Defiance - Dir. Edward Zwick (2008)

James Bond, Sabretooth, and Billy Elliot team up to fight Nazis and save Jews. Sounds like a movie to me.

Comic book artist Art Spiegelman (author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus) coined the phrase ‘holo-kitsch’ for the sentimentalizing of the Holocaust in the popular media. There’s been a recent spate of films centered on the Holocaust and World War II from big-budget spectacles (Valkyrie) to arthouse fare (The Reader) with each one focusing on a single individual within the scope of a larger story. Defiance falls into the first category with plenty of action, pathos, and a cast of name talent. It tells the little-known story of the Bielski brothers who protected over 1200 Jews from the Nazis while hiding in the Belorussian forest.

Daniel Craig takes the lead as the eldest brother Tuvia. He and his younger brothers Zus (Liev Schreiber) and Asael (Jamie Bell) discover their parents have been murdered by the local police chief, a Nazi collaborator. They find their youngest brother Aron (George Mackay) hidden in the barn and look for refuge in the forest. There, they come across dozens of other Jews also hiding from the Germans. Soon, dozens grow into hundreds as everyone looks to Tuvia for guidance in their makeshift community. They build shelters and make some sort of life for themselves with a few of the men taking on “forest wives.” While Tuvia is primarily concerned with protecting those under his watch, Zus has a burning desire for vengeance. The brothers bitterly part as Zus joins up with a regiment of Russian soldiers in their strikes against Nazi forces.

Director Edward Zwick is familiar with films about the personal conflicts in a time of war or struggle. Looking at his body of work, Glory, The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond, you can see similar themes running throughout them. From a technical standpoint, there isn’t much wrong with the picture. The film is well crafted and well acted. The cast is superb. Craig with his piercing blue eyes is the foundation for the film. The guys from Knocked Up will be happy to know he again plays a Jew who kicks some ass. Much like Wolverine, Schreiber plays the more violent-minded brother who displays rare moments of sardonic wit. Their characters are painted as real people with flaws rather than superheroes. In one harrowing scene, Tuvia looks for revenge against the police chief who murdered his parents. He kills the man, but is also forced to kill his sons while the man’s wife watches and begs to be killed as well. It’s not at all the satisfactory sense of closure he had hoped for.

Where the film fails is through its by-the-numbers approach to storytelling. There are the usual Hollywood flourishes that have been added to make the story more cinematic. Zwick goes for the most melodramatic shots when possible as if he were fishing for Oscars. Daniel Craig gives the obligatory inspirational speech while astride a gleaming, white horse. The director even goes for a Godfather moment, intercutting between Asael’s wedding with Zus and the Russians attacking German troops. It makes Defiance a good movie, but not a great one.

Rating: ***

Valkyrie

Valkyrie - Dir. Bryan Singer (2008)


The fall of 2008 is a great time to be a Nazi, cinema-wise. There’s been a wealth of releases dealing with World War II and Hitler’s Fourth Reich. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Adam Resurrected, The Reader, Good, and Defiance, but the biggest, high profile production has to be the Tom Cruise vehicle Valkyrie. Cruise dons an eyepatch as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg who lost his left eye, right hand, several fingers on his left hand during a campaign in North Africa. Already disillusioned with his Fuhrer and the atrocities committed by the SS, Col. Stauffenberg joins with a secret cadre of similarly disenchanted officers and politicians in a plot to assassinate Hitler. The conspirators plan to take Adolf out with a bomb planted at his headquarters, the Wolf’s Lair. However, the true problem that hadn’t been addressed in previous attempts is what to do afterwards. It is Stauffenberg that hatches the idea to use the reserve army to secure Berlin and arrest members of the SS in order to finalize their coup.

You don’t need to be a history buff to know their plan fails. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that they were able to keep the suspense. Director Bryan Singer is used to working with ensemble casts that might be unwieldy in other hands. Here, he re-teams with his Usual Suspects screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie and co-writer Nathan Alexander. Valkyrie doesn’t deal with the deeper issues of war and the concentration camps are only mentioned once throughout the entire film. This is slick Hollywood filmmaking at it’s finest, a stripped down Mission: Impossible without all the gadgets and stunts.

As the lead, Tom Cruise isn’t as terrible as most people assumed. He’s not spectacular, but he’s perfectly adequate, if a tad too American. Luckily for Maverick, he’s got plenty of back-up in the form of an A-list supporting cast of some of the finest actors working today. And best of all, they’re British. Who else can lend credibility and gravitas to a film than an Englishman? Even Hitler is played, quite convincingly, by a British actor (David Bamber). There’s also Kenneth Branagh as Major-Gen. Tresckow who brought Stauffenberg into his circle after failing to kill Hitler with a booby trapped champagne bottle. We’ve got the always excellent Tom Wilkinson as Gen. Fromm who seems content with sitting back and seeing where the chips fall, Terence Stamp as one of the head conspirators, and rounding out the heroes are Bill Nighy and Eddie Izzard in a rare (but great) dramatic role. So that’s Ethan Hunt, Prof. Gilderoy Lockhart, General Zod, Carmine Falcone, Davy Jones, and one of the Disco Boys. How did Hitler survive against those odds?

No one speaks in a German accent by the way as Singer chose to allow his actors to speak with their natural voices. The odd amalgamation of American, British, and German accents is fairly distracting at first, but the story is engrossing enough that you forget all about it.

Cruise’s off-screen shenanigans unfairly soured the film long before it was released. The picture also suffered from several delays and reshoots partly due to film stock being destroyed. Again, that led to some negative buzz which was unfounded. Valkyrie won’t find its way onto any year-end lists, but it’s a good, popcorn thriller.

Rating; ***