Reel To Reel: Valkyrie

The first casualty of war is the plan.

How It Rates: ***
Starring: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson
Rated: PG-13
Red Flags: War Violence, A Few Moments Of Swearing

I was surprised to learn of 15 assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler during the course of World War II. Valkyrie details the last of them, an operation doomed to failure from the beginning because it depends on too many variables and leaves no room for error.

Yet a group of disillusioned officers and politicians are willing to give it a try because they decide Hitler has fallen off the edge, the war is going badly for the Axis, and they need to find peace with honor before Europe is reduced to rubble. Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) is recruited to the cause, having lost an eye and an arm in the opening act of the film for a floundering offensive. Stauffenberg is immediately skeptical of any plan to take out Hitler without a strategy to replace him. Why does that sound so familiar?

Col. Stauffenberg soon finds what he needs is already there: Operation Valkyrie, a plan to provide continuity and security in case of Der Fuhrer's death using a reserve army to provide protection to essential government functions. With a few modifications, Stauffenberg reasons, it can facilitate a coup. The entire operation involves one bomb during a briefing and at least a dozen members of the German High Command aided by politicians. From the start, the pols and brass can't agree on how to proceed. The indecision leads to a key tactical error which costs the turncoats their best opportunity to take Hitler out. Eventually, Stauffenberg gets a bomb into a briefing room and sets it off, but to quote from the movie Casino, "it was Amateur Night."

Valkyrie is the war movie where most of the action is in your head as you watch the wheels of the plan turn, stop, start, and jam. A lot of people sit by phones, fretting for one or two crucial calls. They nervously slam the receiver down and then pick it up again to make another call. The film exposes the bureaucratic nature of old-school war, where the movement of armies rely on three or four people to relay orders and push paper around. Much of Operation Valkyrie depends on a number of underlings following orders like dominoes falling over each other. It's just not that simple, especially when you're trying to get an army to turn against itself.

Hitler would eventually commit suicide when he discovered the truth his officers knew months before. It's interesting to note the Fuhrer's (David Bamber) performance in this picture. Hitler is not his madman self we've all seen in the black and white film but a graying figurehead of a lost cause. He seems almost resigned to his doom. Had the plot on his life succeeded, we can have a nice parlor game talking about how much longer WWII would have lasted, or whether whoever took his place would have negotiated peace with the Allies. Given the fortitude of Churchill and Truman, I doubt anybody would have bargained.