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Review: Valkyrie

You know the bad guys win, so what's the point?

By PETER KEOUGH | December 24, 2008

2.0 Stars

VIDEO: The trailer for Valkyrie

Bryan Singer has a thing for Nazis, but his best work on the subject was the origin-of-Magneto sequence in X-Men. Here he peaks with the opening-credit sequence, which spells out "WALKÜRE" in a title card like one from the old Babelsberg Studios. Creepy. Then Tom Cruise enters and all atmosphere evaporates.

As Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, Cruise brings a steely earnestness to lines like "We've got to kill Hitler." So why not come up with this brilliant idea back in 1933 instead of waiting till after D-Day, when the war was nearly over? Be that as it may, and despite its having every major British actor not in the next Harry Potter, watching Valkyrie is like watching a tape of last year's Super Bowl. You know the bad guys win, so what's the point?

Maybe the colonel and company should have confronted their culpability rather than bemoan the chance misplacement of an exploding briefcase.

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