Valkyrie

Crossing that godawful Will Smith movie off my list before the clock had struck 1:00 p.m. really put some wind in my sails. I was definitely ready for round two, and now I could begin cutting into the brand new releases that had come out the day before.

What to see now? I took a break by hiking a short distance across the parking lot through the heaps of melting ice to a Dunkin' Donuts, where I sampled their egg-and-cheese croissant. At under three bucks, it seemed like a really good deal.

By the time I got back to the theater, I had made up my mind. With so much energy and enthusiasm, and having weathered the worst of it, I figured I'd make it two-for-two with scientologists that day by seeing Valkyrie, the new Tom Cruise movie. How bad could it be really?

The only thing that turned me off was the idea of the inevitable atmosphere of the plot. I figured it would be two hours of on-the-edge-of-my-seat stomach-in-knots tension. It was something I had to be in the mood for, but it was just too tempting a target to cross off my list. So I waited in line again and bought a ticket.

The large-bodied woman taking tickets remembered me. "Making it a two movie day?" she asked. "So far," I replied.

It was showing in one of the bigger auditoriums, half-full by time I took my seat. About halfway through the movie, I had to relocate because the guy behind me was fishing out kernels of popcorn one-by-one from the paper bag, taking about thirty seconds each time with loud crinkling right behind my ears. In those cases, I always just give up and move. Well, at least it wasn't as bad as what happened in Philadelphia the day before.

As for the movie, well it was just damn amazing! Absolutely astounding! In two hours it managed to completely change the way I look at Nazis and World War II.

Before I yesterday, I had long been under the impression that Nazi Germany was a society filled with enormous fear and tension that the secret police would have you executed for the slightest demonstration of dissent. Among the sources of that foolish misapprehension were the dozens and dozens of wartime American movies I've seen, all of which were no doubt propaganda. For example, Hotel Berlin (1945) from Warner Brothers was about Germans in Germany during the war. Raymond Massey, one the great "heavy" character actors of all time, plays the dissenting "good" German. Until Valkyrie, it was one of my favorite movies.

Now I know the truth, that all that stuff about the Gestapo hauling people away for even the suspicion of dissent was all clap-trap. As Mr. Cruise thankfully points out, Germans were quite willing to express opinions against Hitler and the Nazi government. Sure, if they were planting a bomb inside Hitler's plane, they might get a little nervous, but if they are simply in the plot-hatching stage, there was no need to take any extra precautions other than closing the drapes when you were having conspiratorial meetings.

It makes me wander just how the Germans could have gone along with Hitler, given their officer corps in the 1940s was staffed with swaggering postmodern swashbucklers like Tom Cruise, willing to express their in-yer-face opinions about the Nazis to their superiors right on the battlefield. But then, the movie seems to indicate that other than the Jewish thing, the worst thing about Hitler was that he was a bad military commander.

He really wasn't much to be feared, all in all. Heck, all that stuff about Prussian stiffness was just soooo wrong. Forget about all those spiffy Nazi uniforms. His officers didn't even bother to stand at attention on the tarmack for him, but just stood with hunched shoulders like lazy high school students in rumpled poorly fitting wool clothes.

As for tension, this movie had about as much as The Apple Dumpling Gang. It seems that if not for a few missed screw-ups, the whole plot against Hitler would have succeeded on a grand scale, because so many people were willing to stand up to him. The ones that did never really were in much danger, that is, until they were being shot or hanged from meat hooks. What a surprise twist! Didn't see that coming at all. You'd think Hitler could have been a little more chill about it all.

In all seriousness, it really tears me up inside to savage a movie like this, since I wish Hollywood would make a lot more historical dramas than it does. Among other things, the story itself was decent. The script probably was OK. It was just seasoned with all the wrong flavor, pouring sugar where there should have been salt. Take a look at director Bryan Singer's filmography and you may sense why he was a poor choice, especially with out-of-control Mr. Operating Thetan Cruise chewing up the scenery. Despite Cruise's strutting, however, there were a few good performances that actually felt like they could have been German officers, including Tom Wilkinson. But god damn---that eyepatch!

Maybe I just missed the point of the movie. At the very beginning, the titles are all in German, and then are transformed into English. Likewise Cruise begins speaking in German as he writes his journal, then switches to English. Maybe this movie was intended as a "translation" of the Nazis into contemporary vernacular that Americans of 2008 can relate to. After all, we're the Nazis now, right?