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Valkyrie
Score: 3.5 out of 5
Bryan Singer and a star studded cast bring the famous 'July 20' attack on Adolf Hitler's life to the big screen in Valkyrie. Here's some star power for ya: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp, Eddie Izzard and others... yes, Eddie Izzard! No heels, though... bummer. Haven't seen Terence Stamp since Star Wars... Anyway, we found the movie to be well edited and directed. The one thing we found a little unusual was the character's accents; here's what went down: at the beginning of the movie, Tom Cruise's character is writing in his journal and narrating it in German and then they cross fade it with Cruise narrating in English, sort of like the zoom in on the mouth of Sam Neill that John McTiernan did in The Hunt for Red October. So, you think to yourself, "Fine the movie is going to be English... fine." Cruise, as you'll see in the trailer below, doesn't do any accent work, but there are plenty of British actors in the movie and, well, they have British accents. The actor who plays Adolf Hitler, David Bamber, is doing what we assume is a German accent... it's all sort of confusing. Aren't all of the characters German? Shouldn't they all sound about the same? Maybe Bryan Singer was intimidated by the strong, veteran ensemble cast to confront them with this; or maybe he did - can you picture Kenneth Branagh going up to Terence Stamp and saying, "Hey, the Superman guy just criticized my accent - I told him to sod off!" "Indeed? What a wanker! Well played, old man! I'll tell him that my mutant power is the ability to pronounce the 'h' in 'herb'. Ha! Americans..." It'd probably go something like that.
Aside from that, we enjoyed the performances and the editing and directing did a nice job of keeping pace and adding some suspense. Is this a must see? No. Will you be sorry you saw it? We think not; its worth a look, because, after all, we'll go the movies for a history lesson, but not the news.
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