I know this because he was sitting directly in front of me last night at the world premiere of Valkyrie, leaving me to wonder: Who on earth has Devon Sawa slighted to get put up here in the cheap seats with me and my friend, esteemed as we are?
While I wasn't staring at the back of the former teen star's head, admiring each blond hair perfectly in place, I had some time to watch the new Tom Cruise vehicle, directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men). From the start, the movie has the feel of those BIG war movies; ones that perhaps could have been made in the 1940s, with big explosions, bulletted alerts to the location and year at the opening of each scene, planes soaring over views of North Africa, or Berlin, or the Eastern Front in Russia. It tells of the real-life failed attempt (one of 15) on the life of Adolf Hitler, rife with the Titanic effect (ie, maybe this time the ship won't sink... maybe this time in history they will kill him!) so you're on the edge of your seat most of the movie, despite the grim certainty that you kind of know how this all will end.
Tom Cruise is resolute and determined as Colonel Stauffenberg, a dissolusioned German soldier driving the assasination plot forward. His performance is OK, but I think used the physical limitatations of the character as too much of a crutch--as moving as it was to watch Cruise painstakingly button his shirt after losing a hand and three fingers to a bomb blast, struggling with a physical handicap does not an actor make. Stauffenberg also lost his left eye, which is used as a clever stage device for the film, such as when he drops his plastic eye in a co-conspirator's drink as a signal. It's also used for dramatic effect when, three quarters of the movie in, he turns slowly while shaving and the full injury is revealed up close. It's ironic, too, that for much of the movie Stauffenberg is the only one that really sees what's going on -- the evil around them, Germany's honor lost, the true stakes of their plot.
With memorable turns by Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson and Eddie Izzard, the movie is worth forking over $10 for over the holiday season, but I doubt we'll see it in the Oscar one.
2 comments:
I'm a history buff- I am- but I just don't know if I can sit thru another germanic musing. Okay, who am I kidding, I probably will.
Haha yeah! It certainly is interesting to see it from the German side, though to be honest I think they could have done more with it -- moral implications, etc., instead of Tom Cruise just walking around looking sad.
But the history stuff is fun, especially if you like world war 2 stuff... they say things like "panzer division" and stuff. awesome.
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