[lumpy]

I had read the story years ago. This was the last atttempt on Hitler's life by the German people. I've also read some other stories about trying to poison him etc, and he always ended up walking away.

I'm not a Tom Cruise fan. I went ahead and gave this movie a shot just because I figured even Maverick couldn't fuck up a good story like this.

The movie moves along at a nice pace. The actors don't force any ridiculous phony German accents which is a plus. There are only a couple of Hollywood bullshit moments that I could point out: Cruise's character pulls a fellow soldier into a VW Thing (the Nazi's Jeep) just before an Allied fighter plane fills him full of 50 mm lead, and during the execution Cruise's Lt. Buddy puts himself in front of his hero / commanding officer / good buddy so that he can be shot by the firing squad first.

The plan, while complex, was explained in a way that folks who don't know any of the history can follow along, but wasn't dumbed down too much for the rest of us. The eternal tension between politicians and soldiers was played up nicely. There was plenty of blame to go around as to why this didn't work.

I thought the explosion scene was'nt played out very well. It looked like the whole building blew up and everyone should've been toast. It was never explained or shown that Hitler survived because the heavy table that the explosive was planted under ultimately saved his life. Surely everyone in the audience, even the most ignorant, knows that Hitler killed himself in a bunker in 1945. To me it wouldn't have hurt the story to show Hitler get up and shake the dust off after the explosion.

Anyhow, I'm sure our resident expert in all things Nazi and humble moderator can shed some more light into the more tedious details they got wrong, which I'm sure are plenty.

It's weird that right now there are three different major studio movies showing in which the subject is Nazis - Valkyrie, Defiance, and Good.

Lump