I thought it was quite good. I'd give it a 4.5/5 if given the option. You could call it Mission: Impossible 4 if you wanted to, but with the actual mission being impossible.

What was it Cruise yelled at the end? I didn't quite catch it...

I also thought it was very good... 3.5 out of 4.

"Long live our holy Germany!" which were evidently Stauffenberg's last words.

I liked it. And I was pretty impressed by how closely it stuck to the actual story, although I was surprised by how General Rommel's implication in the conspiracy was left out entirely (although falsely accused as it turned out, which lead to his forced suicide). And also how the earlier plot to have a suicide assassination by Axel von dem Bussche was left out too. I guess they didn't want to extend the running time with these other subplots.

4/5 stars

I thought they handled the language translation issues well. The opening has the text on screen in german and fading into english. The dialog does the same.

Overall, a good not great flick. This was 1 in a 3 movie marathon on the day after Christmas. Enjoyed the historical grandeur of some of the parts. Liked the tension in some scenes (even knowing how the whole thing turns out). Thought many of the supporting cast were excellent. Cruise did fine. A typical Cruise performance. Not awarding winning but effective.

I would give this a rating of B or B+.


PS: Biggeest distraction was the lady with the infant three seats down from us. Overall a well-behaved infant, but the hiccups for about 10 minutes sure were distracting. Then dad had to check his texts about 3/5ths of the way through the movie. I give this family a D-.

I still cannot fathom how someone can rationalize taking an infant to a theater. First, you cannot guarantee that the child will not become a distraction to others, even if the child is extremely well behaved. In this case the child was well behaved and only made noise during the hiccup incident. Had the family not been sitting next to our family, I may not have been disturbed, and many of those in our theater for this show undoubtedly were not distrubed by the child. However, they were sitting there, I was disturbed for a significant portion of the film, and I feel like this impacted my overall enjoyment of the film. I paid more money than the family with the infant (unless they paid for the infant, which I doubt) to see the film of my choice, and I have an expectation that I should be able to watch the film without the introduction of a potential serious distraction by third parties. Second, the volume levels in the theater may be damaging to an infants developing aural centers. I tested the pre-shows volume levels using a decibel meter (don't ask) and was getting a solid 70 during the "quiet" pre-show music and clips. During the explosion scenes, I would easily imagine decibel levels in excess of 95-105.

My 15 y/o daughter commented on the situation afterwords, as well. At least she seems to have learned some of the manners we tried to instill.

I liked it but found that 30 minutes in the first half of the movie dragged quite a bit, lots of talky parts with people who are barely introduced (if at all, some people during the final segment were barely in it at all) but the last hour was fairly entertaining... the person I saw it with thought it was the most boring movie of the year and was pretty pissed at me.

I really enjoyed it. I saw it tonight, surprisingly with a packed house of mostly high school kids who seemed in to it as well.

Great acting, Cruise was on top of his game. I never knew the back story of the Valkyrie project or whatever you want to call it so it was really intriguing to me since I'm a bit of a history buff.

I'd say one of the better films of the year.

Great thriller. The accent nonsense shouldn't even be up for discussion. I'll take a pile of differing accents over something like Defiance, where everyone is doing one bad one.

Singer is too strong of a director to allow the accent situation to get in the way.

lol so did Bryan Singer just raid the set of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels when casting or what?

The wife and I saw it this afternoon and both really enjoyed it. I was really impressed with how well Singer and co. were able to create a real sense of tension and drama in spite of already knowing the outcomes of the events depicted. In particular, I thought the scenes at the Wolf's Lair were excellent.

Also saw it with the wife last night. Great movie? No. But definitely very good. Definitely check this out on DVD. Once the story reaches the Wolf's Lair, it really takes off. Some VERY good cinematography as well, especially during the few moments where Cruise and his men are successfully carrying out Operation: Valkyrie.

I really wish more war movies were made without actually involving war, itself. This was a very good political thriller set during WWII.

Just got back, liked this very much. I voted 4/5. The accents didn't bother me at all, I actually liked that the first few lines were in German just to kind of set the tone, then dropped it. I'd rather hope to get past the accents (which I easily did) than hear so many good actors slog through fake German accents.

The theater was sold out this afternoon, mainly older crowd but shockingly well behaved.

One of the best Tom Cruise films I have ever seen! I don't like Cruise as an actor so that is probably not saying very much but I really enjoyed this movie.

I agree. I wanted to give it 4.5/5 as well. Terrific film. There was a critics roundtable on "At the Movies" and all but one gave it a thumbs down mainly because of Cruise. They liked the film enough, but said he was the reason not to see it (!???) Hey, I think the guy is a nut job in real life like the next person, but he was pretty damn good in this. And the film was very stylish and well written. I'm glad it's doing well at the box-office. It deserves it. I'll be picking this up on Blu-Ray for sure. Singer never disappoints me.

I pretty much agree with all you said. I am not a Cruise fan but he was very good in this. It showed that the killing part was just the first and really easiest part of the plan. Trying to take over the government without fighting breaking out and taking control of the Wehrmacht was a huge task. And they came so close. I also liked that they made an effort on the equipment. The aircraft, half-tracks, tank and other vehicles were either actual or pretty good mock ups. I will defintley see this again.

That was the worst display of film criticism I've ever seen. "Well, we know what happens, so it couldn't possibly build suspense." You. Are. A. Fucknut. I wanted to strangle all five of them. It's about how a film is structured. Do they have the same criticisms for book adaptations? Probably not; I don't think any of them can read. I like how they actually said the eye-patch was ridiculous, and shit on Cruise's lack of accent when all the British people spoke with slight variations of their normal accents. God I miss Ebert, and even Roeper. Roeper was a tool, but he knew a little something about something.

Heh heh. Actually Roeper is a pretty cool guy. Have you ever seen or heard him on Stern? He's actually really funny. Sure, I didn't agree with a lot of his reviews. Hell, I miss Gene Siskel. Now that guy could talk film.

Siskel rocked. I don't know why they don't put his stuff online like the Sun-Times did for Ebert. I shudder to think a paper as big as the Tribune wouldn't have an archive.

EDIT: also I was wrong. Valkyrie wasn't the worst bit of criticism I've seen. I just watched that infamous roundup for The Women where Lyons dropped those immortal words (I can't even type the sentence out, but you know what it is). Almost snapped my laptop in half in rage.

Please share. I didn't see or hear about that. But I read somewhere that Lyons is the most hated film critic. By all the other professional critics.

He said, and I quote, "I like women, but I didn't like THE WOMEN!" At which point I blacked out and woke up in Orlando 12 hours later covered in blood. How do you say something as utterly nonsensical and stupid as that and still have a job. I almost wish he said something genuinely offensive like "This movie is about women trying to find themselves, which is silly because they never look in the kitchen" because I would have been less outraged than I was when I heard that. And the look of smug "I just made a joke there" satisfaction on his face- no, I'm not talking about this anymore.

Oh my God. I'm so embarrassed for him. You know, his dad is kind of a tool too. I see that apple didn't fall too far from the nerd tree.