I suppose, in addition to his other kooky hobbies, we can now anoint Tom Cruise the unofficial head of the Nazi Anti-Defamation League.   His new movie, “Valkyrie,”  strives to convince us that not every Nazi was as evil as Adolf Hitler.   In fact, some of them fought for Truth and Justice by risking, and ultimately losing, their lives in an attempt to assassinate  Der Fuhrer.  They were good guys, really, they just found themselves on the wrong side of a terrible conflict. 

It might be nice to believe that.  Surely your average Nazi was not the sadistic monster you find in the movies.   And we all know about good Germans; we were all made to read “The Diary of Anne Frank” in middle school.   Come to think of it, perhaps Singer should’ve made a movie about Dietrich Boenhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian who was also part of Operation Valkyrie, but had opposed Nazism from the beginning and spent most of the war years smuggling Jews into Switzerland.   Instead, “Valkyrie” focuses on Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise,) and a number of high-ranking generals and politicians within the Nazi party.    Stauffenberg planted the bomb in the Wolf’s Lair, and the others orchestrated the coup after it went off.   To my eye, they don’t appear noble and heroic, or all that interested in Truth and Justice.   They look like political opportunists.   After five years of fighting with and for Hitler (you don’t get to be a colonel–much less a general– through conscientious objection, after all) they saw the end of the war approaching, and found themselves on the wrong side.  The coup was their attempt to do something about it.   That’s not heroic, that’s pragmatic.   And kind of ugly. 

The funny thing is, as much as “Valkyrie” talks these men up as heroes, it delivers them as politicians, and sometimes as cowards.  I’m not a historian, and I knew very little about the Operation Valkyrie (aside from how it turned out) going in to the movie.   If Singer had wanted to convince me Colonel Stauffenberg and his associates really were heroes, I think he could have.  He’s a competent director.  So why do they come across as rats trying to desert a sinking ship?   Almost all of the tension in “Valkyrie” is generated by hesitation and overcalculation.  Stauffenberg alone acts as a soldier completely committed to the mission; the rest are only committed to their own survival –- and, if possible, political advancement.

The overall tone of “Valkyrie” is pretty heavy and not a little bit suffocating.   These men find themselves between a rock and a hard place; it’s clear the Allies are going to win the war, but Hitler remains a force to be reckoned with.   There is a lot of frustration, fear and desperation onscreen; coupled with the fact that we know, going in, that the plot fails, Singer has a lot to overcome to make this a “fun” movie experience.    He succeeds in spots, managing to generate the kind of fast-paced and tense sequences you’d find in a heist film.   Unfortunately, the breathlessness dissipates too quickly, and we’re back to frustration and calculation.

“Valkyrie” is supposed to be about good men trapped in a bad government: instead it feels, at times, like a good movie trapped in a bad production. Ignore the trailers and cut off the first and last ten minutes of voiceover and montage, and it’s a strikingly different movie.  There’s material here – and acting chops (Bill Nighy, Eddie Izzard, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh) – to pull off a film about a group of decidedly unheroic men, and the desperate actions they took in a desperate hour.   The kind of movie that dares you to like its characters despite their flaws, their histories, and their failings, and dares to ask you what you would do in their place.    “Valkyrie” hints at these notes, but backs away from them when the money’s down.   It asks us to see a few Nazi officers and politicians as heroes; maybe Singer though it would be too much to ask us to see them as ordinary men.   

Recommended

• If you’re dying to see Tom Cruise with an eye patch (and a missing hand.) 
• If you’re a World War II buff (though I don’t know how accurate this is.)
• If you love conspiracy theories, assassination plots, and movies about them (even if they go awry in the end.

By Willie Krischke — August 29, 2008.  

Ahh, finally….a summer comedy that is actually funny. Really, really funny. For more than a few moments at a time.

After a series of so-bad-they’re-bad flicks (Love Guru, Zohan, Step Brothers) and a minor disappointment (Pineapple Express), “Tropic Thunder” delivers the goods. It is hilarious. It’s stupid-funny, and not just in bits, but all throughout. It is manic and smart and did I say funny? This is the kind of comedy you know you will see more than once. Without knowing what the lines are yet, you know you will be quoting lines from it.

You’re going to hear that it’s offensive, that you should boycott this one, because of material about the mentally disabled, or about African Americans, or pandas, or Asian movie taste. Well, I don’t fall into any of the demogaphics that might be offended, so I can’t really say for sure, whether it’s offensive or not. But I don’t understand the protests. What I saw was a Hollywood satire; that is, a movie that at every second and in every possible way, makes fun of the way things are presented in movies. Things like mental disability and “the plight of the African American man.”  And pandas. For instance, it makes fun of actors who play mentally or developmentally disabled characters in naked grabs for awards, and the industry that responds in kind. That’s a long ways away from making fun of the mentally disabled. In fact, the point it makes is so sharp, after watching it, you might want to boycott “Rain Man.”

[metacafe]http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2051856/never_go_full_retard/[/metacafe]

But really, I don’t want to talk about who might be offended by this movie, and why. I want to talk about how funny it is. I mean, funny. I’m trying to remember the last time I laughed this hard, and relished the jokes this much. I think it was “The Big Lebowski.” That was, what, ten years ago? I’ve seen a lot of funny movies since then. None as funny as this. The first ten minutes are funnier than anything else this summer, as “Tropic Thunder” opens with fake trailers, introducing all of our major characters. There’s

-Jack Black, who seems to be a white Eddie Murphy, coming off a series of movies starring himself, and himself, and himself, all in fat suits and farting a lot.

-Ben Stiller, a sort of Stallone, coming off his own series of movies, in which the earth melts, and then freezes, and then melts again… or something like that.

-Robert Downey Jr., the consummate method actor, the kind who uses Oscars as door stops and “never breaks character until the DVD commentary is done.”

These guys get together to make “the war movie to end all war movies,” and, well, pretty much do. End all war movies, that is. After everything that goes wrong on this set, it’s hard to imagine anyone daring to make a war movie again. Director Steve Coogan can’t manage his actors, or, more accurately, can’t manage his actor’s agents, personal assistants, and caterers, and after he gets certain parts of his anatomy handed to him on a platter by his producer decides to go au natural and make “Blair Witch goes to War.” I’m not going to tell you who plays the producer. Probably you’ve heard already. But I hadn’t, and when it dawned on me, fully halfway through the movie, it was such a sublime comedic moment, I’d hate to be the one who snatches it away from you. It’d be like telling you how “The Sixth Sense” ends.

Black, Stiller, and Downey Jr, all give pretty much one-note performances, but they manage to add up to a comedic symphony. These guys are playing to the rafters, and it’s a joy to watch. But in the end, the movie belongs to the straight men – Jay Baruchel and Brandon T. Jackson (in a role that all the rapper-wannabe-actors like Ludacris and Xzibit should’ve fought for, but apparently didn’t.) It’d be nice if Dreamworks would honor the old straight man/funny man 60/40 split that Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello followed–- straight man gets 60, because funny men are a dime a dozen, but a good straight man’s hard to find. But they won’t. This is Downey Jr., Black, and Stiller we’re talking about, after all. And they may be willing (and able) to make a movie that fiercely satirizes the Hollywood system, but in the end, they’re stilling going to take home their usual checks.

This review is getting long, and there are so many things I haven’t even mentioned yet. The difficulty of writing about comedies is that jokes are much funnier than descriptions of jokes. Go see it. And then write me and tell me about your favorite parts. And in ten years, we’ll have a “Tropic Thunder” party, and ten bucks says it’s just as funny then as it is now. Or funnier.

Recommended

• to anyone who really needs a solid laugh.
• to those few and brave who’ve lived through the rest of this summer’s comedies.
• to fans of sharp, perceptive, totally over-the-top satire.
• to anyone sick of Hollywood pretension and ready to see a few sacred cows barbecued.

Not Recommended

• to anyone who thinks they may be offended by it. You probably will.