In theaters
“Valkyrie”
Directed by Bryan Singer, written by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander, 120 minutes, rated PG-13.
The new Tom Cruise movie, “Valkyrie,” was kneecapped long before it goose stepped into theaters.
Even before it was seen by critics or the countless Internet gossip hounds who pose as critics, negative buzz based on Cruise’s private life, the controversial religion he practices, the mistakes he’s made publicly and has been trying to repair for years, and the questions surrounding the film’s shifting release date killed it. The movie opened in fourth place at the box office, hardly a showstopper for an actor who once ruled the cineplex.
And yet here’s the thing — “Valkyrie” is a slick, engrossing thriller, with Cruise acquitting himself in a buckled-down performance that’s more restrained than anything the actor has offered in recent memory.
Based on Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander’s script, the film stars Cruise as Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the real-life German officer who joined others in World War II in a daring July 1944 plot to get close to Hitler (David Bamber) and blow him up.
Among those assisting Stauffenberg in that task were Gen. Friedrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy), Major Gen. Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh), and other officers played by Tom Wilkinson, Terrence Stamp and Eddie Izzard. Each actor is so solid in their underwritten roles, they lift the movie considerably, infusing their char-acters with more interest than they might have had otherwise.
Since anyone with a passing knowledge of history knows that Hitler ended his life by committing suicide, the amount of suspense Singer wrings from the failed plot to kill him is impressive.
He does so by relying on the suspense inherent in how everything went wrong. Those are the details many won’t know, and so Singer places his bets on them and builds upon them. He pays particular attention to how the plot was executed, how some on the inside questioned whether it could succeed, and also on the group’s tense efforts to alter Operation Valkyrie. If the desired changes were agreed upon by Hitler — and they had to be in order for them to go in effect — they would unleash Germany’s reserve army upon Berlin in ways that would assist the resistance in the wake of the Fuhrer’s death.
From this, the movie brews at a nice clip, with Cruise carrying his share of the action amid a top-notch cast game to carry the rest of it.
Especially good is Wilkinson as Gen. Friedrich Fromm, who saw in this plot a way to advance himself or, if the plan collapsed, an unfortunate way to end his life. As such, he wavers on the sidelines, publicly pledging his allegiance to Hitler while waiting for his opportunity to either rise into a better position if the coup suc-ceeded or, if it failed, to call out all those who tried to kill Hitler. By far, he’s the most nuanced character in a worthwhile movie further heightened by Newton Thomas Sigel’s sterling cinematography.
Grade: B+
On DVD and Blu-ray disc
“Bangkok Dangerous”
Directed by the Pang Brothers, written by Jason Richman, 98 minutes, rated R.
File it under “What was he thinking?” — and then file that file in the trash.
The Nicolas Cage movie, “Bangkok Dangerous,” a remake of the 1999 Thai film of the same name, finds Cage once again turning himself into such a hard-looking wreck it’s difficult to watch the movie without being distracted by how jarringly bad he looks.
It doesn’t make sense — why does he pointlessly continue to hit himself with the ugly stick, as he also did in two recent films, “Next” and “Ghost Rider”? It isn’t because he wants to be taken seriously (the man does, after all, have an Academy Award) and it certainly has nothing to do with the characters he’s playing in these films, so it comes down to whether Cage even cares how he comes across onscreen. If he doesn’t care, it’s starting to show at the box office. “Dangerous” tanked.
In the film, Cage is Joe London, an international assassin so emaciated and drawn he looks like Amy Winehouse after setting her beehive ablaze. We first see him in Prague, where he skillfully takes out his target before jetting off to Bangkok for a working vacation. It’s there that he will kill four men for Surat (Nirattisai Kali-jaruek), who oddly looks and behaves like an Asian version of William Shatner.
Anybadweave, along the way, Joe finds alliteration by hiring Kong (Shahkrit Yamnarm), a street thief eager to learn the ropes, and also by falling for a beautiful deaf-mute named Fon (Charlie Young), whose sweetness heals his wounds, including the scars etched into his heart.
If that last line made you gag, so will parts of the movie, such as the awkward stalker scenes in which Joe tries to get his game on by picking up Fon at the pharmacy where she crushes meds. Since Joe looks twice her age and tends to slink through the pharmacy’s aisles in an effort to catch glimpses of Fon, the film’s forced love angle feels uneasy at best, queasy at worst.
What does Fon see in him, anyway? His life insurance policy? Given their language barrier, Joe’s inability to communicate beyond lines like “Thai food hot,” and his discount wicked witch wig, which makes it appear as if the Black Death fell on his head, you have to wonder about that — just as you have to wonder about how the rest of this mess got made.
Grade: D
WeekinRewind.com is the site for Bangor Daily News film critic Christopher Smith’s blog, DVD giveaways and archive of hundreds of movie reviews. Smith’s reviews appear Mondays, Fridays and weekends in Lifestyle, as well as on bangordailynews.com. He may be reached at Christopher@weekinrewind.com.