Watched Valkyrie last night

[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

[Chad_Rushing]

"And Hitler was a mass-murdering fuckhead as many important historians... have... said... And he was a vegetarian and a painter, which shows that mass-murderers come from the areas that you least expect. He must have been going, 'I can't get the trees right... DAMN! I WILL KILL EVERYONE IN THE WORLD!!!'" ~Eddie Izzard "Dressed to Kill"

Much funnier seeing him do it... /shrug.

God I post too much...

[P.P.T.]

Why don't they ever make movies about mass murdering communists?

[Chad_Rushing]

Because Commies are apparently quite scary. That would be in the horror section, I suppose...

[lumpy]

Originally Posted by P.P.T.

Why don't they ever make movies about mass murdering communists?

There is a soon to be released, two part movie about Che Guevara.

Lump

[orb451]

Well I saw the Che Guevarra movie you're talking about (part 1 of 2 that is) and it was a snooze fest. I don't understand people's infatuation with the guy... not to spoil anything about it, but it's basically him and his cronies shooting anything and everything for 2+ hours. I like action movies a lot but this thing literally put me to sleep a few times.

<possible spoiler>
As to Valkyrie, saw that one too and thought it was decent enough. I agree they should have showed Hitler surviving it at some point but I guess more drama is built up letting the audience guess whether he made it or not (though most people with 1/2 a clue as you pointed out would know that he DID make it).

Aside from everything that went awry immediately after, at the very least I think they should have pointed out why he wasn't physically killed by the blast. Stressing the importance of the bomb and its placement came into play as well as how 1 was used instead of 2, how the bomb was originally designed for the his concrete bunker which would have helped contain the blast. How the other officer moving the bomb from one side of the table's legs to the other and so on helped him survive.

But whatever, I guess it's just more Hollywood schlock, you can't expect them to get everything right. After reading Mein Kampf I've come to the conclusion that Hitler really believed what he was doing was the right thing to do. And while I couldn't disagree with his point of view on race and religion more, as I think it was Will Smith of all people said recently, something like when Hitler woke up in the morning, I don't think his first thoughts were "how can I be the most evil bastard possible?" or things along those lines. He just thought he was doing the right thing for the country.

Anyway, that's just my .02 +/- adjusted for inflation.

orb.