Valkyrie
2008
***½
Director: Bryan Singer
Cast: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Carice van Houten, Eddie Izzard, Terence Stamp, Tom Wilkinson, Christian Berkel, Thomas Kretschmann
Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg is a wounded veteran of the North African Campaign, who has become disillusioned with Germany's future under the Nazi regime. In the following months, he becomes one of the key figures in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and stage a coup. Bryan Singer has turned these real-life events into a tight and entertaining but respectful thriller, which manages to be gripping even though we know how it ends. Tom Cruise is the only American in a cast of Englishmen and Germans, and he gives an intense but subdued performance.
