Valkyrie, as field-commanded by director Bryan Singer, succeeds on its own terms as a handsome hybrid of conspiracy thriller and history lesson, of Mission: Impossible and The Day of the Jackal.

Full Review | Original Score: B | Sep 7, 2011

A historically respectful, morally careful film.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 5, 2009

When he is at the top of his game, as he is here, Cruise's charisma is blinding.

| Jan 29, 2009

A film more concerned with 'how' than 'why' or 'who', Valkyrie would have benefited from more scrutiny and complexity. Still, once the bomb goes off, the thrills come in spades.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Singer makes a noble and romantic fist of this terrific story but it feels spookily like a well-oiled Hollywood entertainment rather than a sensational chapter of history.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Director Bryan Singer has put together a fairly workable, old-fashioned second world war movie.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2009

This is no The Day of the Jackal. It's functional. Respectful rather than inspired. It won't damage Cruise's reputation, but it won't enhance it in any degree either.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Valkyrie may not be awards bait but it is a solid, at times gripping, thriller that wrings every ounce of drama out of what is, at heart, a pulsating tale of the courage and idealism of some undone by the cowardice and politics of others.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Valkyrie seems more like history by Nintendo: a slickly devised exercise in action drama whose entire research and development budget went into the external details of the plot, leaving none for the inner realism of its participants.

| Jan 23, 2009

It feels no more authentic than Stauffenberg's glass eyeball.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Everyone does a jolly good job, including X-Men director Bryan Singer, as the conspiracy plot offers adequate tension and bores sturdily onwards.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

The end result, however, is a skewed picture that manages to promote Hollywood-style derring-do and make fascism look more stylish and profound than it has done in years.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

A slick, starry thriller that entertains for the full two-hour running time without threatening to do much more than that.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 23, 2009

Surely there is some middle ground between a history lesson and mindless action-adventure. The people who made Valkyrie not only didn't find that ground; they weren't even looking for it.

| Original Score: C- | Jan 5, 2009

There is an urgent you-are-there magnetism, each fateful mistake and misstep foreshadowing the group's ultimate demise only adding to the slowly building excitement.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 2, 2009

It is a well-made film that raises timeless questions about the demands of military duty when they are placed in conflict with higher principles.

| Dec 30, 2008

What if this lesser-known chapter of German resistance had been more deeply captured? What if the moral conflicts running through this movie about love of country and revolt said more about Germany, war and, yes, genocide?

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 30, 2008

Singer keeps the conspiracy racing to its fated conclusion.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 30, 2008

As a suspense movie, this works pretty well.

| Dec 30, 2008

Following Hitchcock's 'bomb under the desk' dictum to the bitter end just doesn't work out to anyone's satisfaction here.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 30, 2008