Tom Cruise plays Claus Von Stauffenberg, a Colonel who has come to the realization that Hitler is completely off of his rocker and is leading the German's to certain failure in this World War. After loosing an arm, an eye, and just generally getting BTFU in Africa, Stauffenberg returns to Germany to take a cush desk job, where he meets several soldiers and politico's who are trying desperately to figure out a way to kill Hitler, and disperse the SS.
The problem with many of these films is that they are, ultimately, a lot more interesting as History Channel documentary's. At least in that format, their usually only an hour and a half long (commercials pop them up to two), and their not full of pointless and self important "drama" between characters that you never really get to know, and never really get to care about. Valkyrie was like watching paint dry, because, you already know what's going to happen - Hitler doesn't die. It would be like if James Cameron's blockbuster didn't flesh out the relationship between Jack and Rose, and actually tried to keep you in suspense as to whether the Titanic sinks or not. Bryan Singer, probably best known for the first two X-Men films, just didn't pull it off for me. I never felt interested in any of the characters, least of all Stauffenberg, and I found myself not really caring whether they succeeded at their plan or not (even though I knew they wouldn't). I think, on all counts, they just, flat out, made an uninteresting film, which seems to be happening more and more as the World War II film keeps coming back with a vengeance... It's like the Police Academy of genres... Maybe, someday, if we're all lucky, people will just let it go for a while, and, like Western's, we'll get a decent one every couple of years.
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