I saw Valkyrie in clean, crisp digital projection at BNAT last December, and it was one of the highlights of that insane 24 hours of my screening life. It will be a home video discovery for History Channel fiends and people who enjoy action/thrillers. More often than not, when I mention how well-made it is to friends, the reaction is surprised incredulity. The following is an almost exact transcript of a real conversation from a few days ago:
"You mean the Tom Cruise as a Nazi movie?"
"He's in the German armed forces, but he isn't a Nazi."
"But...weren't they all Nazis?"
"No, actually. What were you planning to go see this weekend?"
"Night at the Museum 2, I heard Amy Adams' ass looks great in tho--"
"Go rent this and catch the other one when someone rents it at Thanksgiving, you'll thank me."
The movie is about the very true story of a small group of German officers who conspired to kill Hitler. Led by Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise), we all know what the outcome was. The great success of the movie is its vivid, authentic reproduction of how those events played out. The rest of the cast is fantastic, including Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Christian Berkel (who steals the show), Terrence Stamp, Eddie Izzard, Kevin McNally, Thomas Kretschmann, and Thor helmer Ken Branagh among many others. It's the kind of ensemble you'd kill for. The thing many have nitpicked on in that respect is the variety of accents all the characters have.
I wish my US Blu-ray of Valkyrie had a German dub track in addition to the Spanish and French ones. European dubs are always great. Thing is, I really don't mind everyone using their native accents in the standard English language track. It's more consistent than the scads of movies where one lousy accent sticks out and ruins a movie (as it almost did Man Hunt). Are these characters playing Germans who speak English to each other? No. Would it be more perfect to have everyone speaking perfect German? Yes, but there's no way it'd happen for a variety of reasons in a major studio release. It'd hit 12 screens and be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.
More importantly, radically fewer people in the US and UK wold see the movie. Beyond the awards season-standard "the true story that must be seen!" trumpeting, it is very much worth one's time. The story has been done previously, nearly 20 years ago in The Plot to Kill Hitler, a TV movie released on DVD this past January, but that adaptation pales in comparison to Valkyrie.
The included supplements are also much more comprehensive than I'm used to on new releases. I haven't listened to all of the two Feature Commentaries yet, but I sampled the first bit of both. The first features Bryan Singer, Tom Cruise, and Chris McQuarrie and the second is McQuarrie and co-writer Nathan Alexander. Similar to the tracks on The Usual Suspects, there's a lot of information to be digested and they both start off lively enough.
The featurettes are better than EPK fluff, with The Journey to Valkyrie [HD 15:56] coming the closest to being self-congratulatory but still remaining informative. They could have glued it and the other three pieces of its type together with a Play All, since they all are sourced form the same set of interviews. The African Front Sequence [HD 7:01] covers the bang that opens the movie; Taking to the Air [HD 7:32] covers the real vintage aircraft they used; and Recreating Berlin [HD 6:51] is more about the culture shock of putting up Nazi flags in present-day Berlin than production design.
More interesting than all of those for me was The Road to Resistance: A Visual Guide, in which Col. von Stauffenberg's grandson gives a guided tour of significant real-life locations. History Channel documentary The Valkyrie Legacy [HD 1:54:12] is nearly the running time of the movie, and is worth every minute. I'm hot and cold when it comes to artist series Q&A sessions, as they're either great due to talent driving them or terrible due to a lousy moderator. The Reel Pieces with Tom Cruise & Bryan Singer at the 92nd Street Y [SD 38:57] Q&A thankfully stays interesting and stands out from the other extras so as to not be repetitive.
The second disc is a Digital Copy, which is nice, but I don't imagine myself wanting to queue it up on a regular basis. All the above features are on the Blu-ray. If you're buying this, make sure you know there are feature differences between Blu and DVD. The 2-disc DVD release is just the Commentaries, The Journey to Valkyrie, The Valkyrie Legacy, and the Digital Copy. The single disc's got bupkis other than the movie. Valkyrie hit the street last Tuesday.
Click on the box art to order from Amazon.
At the time of this posting, it's a hefty $27.99. I'll keep an eye out for price drops.
A portion of the purchase (whenever it's more reasonable) goes toward supporting disc reviews featured in this column.