Valkyrie: Critic Reviews

Valkyrie transforms World War II into a boy's adventure.

Director Bryan Singer has put together a fairly workable, old-fashioned second world war movie.

Valkyrie is a World War II thriller without enough thrills.

Valkyrie is a brutally efficient bit of storytelling, and it makes no unforced errors.

With just the slightest tilt toward black comedy, Valkyrie could have been the Dilbert of Nazi movies.

Valkyrie feels like another installment in the never-ending franchise -- not just the action-movie one, but the Tom Cruise one. Like the operation itself, it's a good idea -- just not well-executed.

Valkyrie is like having to watch someone build a bomb and then never getting to see it explode.

Mr. Cruise's performance turns out to be brisk and reasonably plausible, though unexceptional, while the production as a whole succeeds as an elaborate procedural, impressively staged in historical locations.

Singer keeps the conspiracy racing to its fated conclusion.

What if this lesser-known chapter of German resistance had been more deeply captured? What if the moral conflicts running through this movie about love of country and revolt said more about Germany, war and, yes, genocide?

Valkyrie doesn't whip you up like that Jewish vigilante avenger picture Defiance, but in this season of throat-grabbing Holocaust movies, its gentlemanliness is most welcome.

The problem is not that we know the outcome. The problem is the buildup.

A meticulous thriller based on a large-scale conspiracy within the German army to assassinate Hitler.

Judging by Mark Twain's comment about the music of Richard Wagner (better than it sounds), if Twain were around to see Valkyrie he'd likely say it's better than it seems.

As a suspense movie, this works pretty well.

The film isn't half bad. It's certainly not the unwitting laugh riot that many (me included) expected.

Singer has a masterful touch with composition, creating tension simply by the way he places his actors around a room. And even though we know how it turned out, the assassination plot remains a gripping tale.

It's a crafty action flick with a pristine cast that works, ever so briefly, as a wish-fulfillment fantasy.

Director Bryan Singer keeps the pace fast, and although we know the ultimate outcome, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of what-if thinking.

Bryan Singer's long-awaited account of the near-miss assassination of Adolf Hitler by a ring of rebel German army officers on July 20, 1944, has visual splendor galore, but is a cold work lacking in the requisite tension and suspense.

Valkyrie is a taut suspense flick for grown-ups that asks: What if ruthless German efficiency had been used against Hitler?

In Cruise's hands, von Stauffenberg comes off as a very human window into this history and this engrossing and involving movie.

Like the coup whose story it tells, Valkyrie is a near miss, failing to sweep us along for what should have been a dramatic ride.

It rarely rises to the level of entertainment you expect from a wartime thriller -- there's something rote and foregone about the whole affair.

It may be the same old partners but it's a better dance -- here, at least, history leads and Hollywood follows.