Have you ever heard of the term "Wooden Ducked?" My family says this whenever someone tells us to do what we were about to do already, or when we are made to feel like idiots. The term comes from a film called Every Girl Should Be Married (1948)with Cary Grant in which Betsy Drake throws a wooden duck at her boss when he makes her feel small in this way. Oddly, Watching Valkyrie felt a lot like being wooden ducked. The director allowed us to feel twinges of something, then would subsequently give a close up to remind us of what we were supposed to be feeling. In a beautiful scene, a woman is crying in the corner of the screen. She is not the focal point (Cruise no doubt saw to that...sorry Tommy.), but we observant types know and see that she is crying. We may even know why. Then the drop. The pan in to the tear itself and the lines that tell us why... Why? Mr. Singer, after a lovely first 2 xmen movies, would you choose Superman Returns over redeeming the 3rd X. Be the hero you are hoping to revive and make X3 already. Sorry. Rant. And, now Mr. Singer, with money and phenomenal actors at your disposal (hmm...disposal...hmm), why would you choose to create an emotionless holocaust piece?
Sadly, I was never allowed to forget that Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. Despite his loppy, curly top, this sad and true story, and his piercing glass eye (which he treats as souvenier /calling card), I always thought "hmm...Tom".
The cast as a whole is brilliant, including the indelible Kenneth Branagh ("that guy who does a bunch of Shakespeare" - as I've heard him called). This is why I must choose to blame Cruise and Singer for the emotionless plea throughout this lamentable film / story. We kept feeling like we were supposed to care...then... we'd see Tom. Perhaps it was Cruise's singular, stoic, stone-faced expression. Perhaps we knew the inevitable outcome. Perhaps it was the unabashed blend of non-German accents used by the actors who were supposed to be playing Germans.
This film did challenge my perceptions in one way, however. I have always naively considered all WWII German soldiers to be brainwashed Nazis. Valkyrie (pronounced Wal-ku-ree in the literal German) reminded me that this was not the case - that even at the highest ranks of the greatest evils, leaders do think for themselves and die for truth.
True, it felt almost documentary in the pacing. My brother felt that 2 more months of planning would have made this a better movie. He also said, however, that the film was worth seeing if only to listen to his sisters laugh and giggle out loud every time they heard the tones of Meryl's melodic and convincing Julia Child impression. Meryl