I love learning about history and always really enjoyed World War II as a subject. With that in mind I was seriously looking forward to the new Tom Cruise movie; Valkyrie. The movie is based on fact and just a little bit of conjecture but to really enjoy the movie being a fan of World War II history helps as does being a fan of a who’s who o British cinema. Tom Cruise is, of course, top dog but he is joined by an otherwise great cast including none other than Eddie Izzard in a stunning role that left my friend proclaiming; “That is NOT Eddie Izzard” as I whispered it to her then, of course, when his name appeared on the credits she said a few curse words in between “you were right”.

In any case we were treated by a great performance from Tom Wilkinson who was also in Rocknrolla earlier this year; Bill Nighy who made appearance in Sean of the Dead and hot Fuzz but here is plays a wishy-washy General; Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp and Kevin McNally among others.

Project Valkyrie is a story about a few German soldiers that realized Hitler was the scourge of not just Germany but the world. Germany was really separated in two parts as far as the military went: The SS and the regular army. The SS was Hitler’s brute squad that carried out his dirty work of mass slaughter. They were led by Himler, a psychopath in his own right. The regular army followed their orders and swore an Oath to the chancellor – Adolf Hitler. In the army several officials of high rank believed Hitler needed to be stopped and used a plan that Hitler devised himself as a means to remove power from the Nazi regime: Project Valkyrie. The plans were rewritten to exclude the SS and the plan was to make the SS appear as if they killed Hitler and were trying to assume power.

The kicker here is that the assassination attempt happened – the cutting off of Berlin happened and all that needed to be done was that Hitler was actually killed in the blast. There are many conspiracy theorists that believe Hitler was killed in the blast and that the government was ran by the remaining heads. Hitler used a lot of doubles – much like Sadam Hussein and Bin Laden (where do you think they got the idea?) so you can easily speculate what could possibly have happened.

Valkyrie has a lot of setup that is not remotely boring and the action began from minute one – a lot of tension building and emotional scenes throughout. Bryan Singer brought his wonderful, straight-forward directing style to the film and adding in real World War II flyers instead of CGI ones was brilliant. The sets and props were authentic as authentic could be right down to the adhesive on the envelopes. Everything was surely there for this movie to work and to work very well. The story was top notch the acting beyond reproach and the cinematography was dead on. I highly recommend Valkyrie for any fan of World War II movies, action movies and Tom Cruise.