Rating: 8/10
The movie succeeds, strangely enough, because you know how it's going to end. Hopefully everyone who went to go see this movie knows that Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker, and was not assassinated by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Cruise) as part of a plot to overthrow Nazi Germany on a single day. So, you know it's going to end badly for the good guys; Hitler, as I understand it, was not the most forgiving of guys. Thankfully, few people in attendance know exactly how Stauffenberg and Operation Valkyrie failed, and Singer is able to twist this lack of knowledge into a smart, suspenseful thriller of a tragedy. You know what's coming, but you don't know when, or how.
I had been worried that Valkyrie would end up being a talky bore, considering that I had never heard of such a major assassination attempt on Hitler before. Luckily, Stauffenberg gets much farther in terms of the attempt and coup than most people would expect, and this makes for a mesmerizing second half as we get to watch the pieces fall into place... and then crumble just as quickly as they came. It's also sad, to think that had one little moment been just a tad more effective, the entire last year of the war could have gone quite differently.
Valkyrie looks and feels like a suspense thriller, and therefore it is. It is not an Oscar-worthy drama and from the beginning, United Artists should have never treated it as such. The movie would have been better as a German film, of course, but Singer has successfully created another exciting, suspenseful movie. Recommended.