I don't know if this was like a passive-aggressive being an asshole kinda thing, or if I was just was short-tempered or both, but when I went to the ticket booth and asked the dude for a ticket to Valkyrie, he tells me in this faggy voice to speak up, so I yell at this motherfucker ONE FOR VALKYRIE PLEASE!!! I said it nicely the first time, but this dude had to mock my tender voice, I guess. I'm sure it's my fault, though. It's always my fault.
Just as the MGM lion starts to roar from the screen, a dude who's fatter than me and is sitting a couple rows ahead of me starts chatting furiously with his partner. He then gets up and waddles over to the aisle and notices the German text popping up and loudly exclaims "Oh man! It's already starting, oh man! I'm missing it already!" and quickly waddles out of the room. Some dude in a baseball cap walks up next to me (I'm in an aisle seat) and just stands there, scoping out the theatre for the first five minutes. Fatter-than-me dude comes back with a large popcorn and drink and waddles back to his seat. I'm glad that all he missed was some kind of Hitler oath being read in German and translated in English, instead of some story-related shit. Finally, a chick comes in the room and walks up to Baseball Cap Dude and he tells her the only seats available are near the front. She looks behind me and says "There's two empty seats right there" and he just shrugs, then they walk all the way to the front and sit there.
Valkyrie is about a group of Englishmen who are lead by an American in a plan to kill Hitler by posing as Nazis and then getting close enough to that fucking asshole so they could blow him up into little bitch-ass Fuhrer bits. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that Hitler committed suicide nine months later. Take that as you wish. By the way, why is it that every asshole who shows up and kills a bunch of people then takes his own life? These fucking scumbags always have to take the pleasure from us, don't they?
When the movie begins, they are well into the first part of the plan, because most of these dudes are in pretty high ranking positions within the German army. But these guys are really fucking sure of themselves, because they don't even try to act like Germans, if they're English then they're REALLY fucking English. One wonders if they always did it that way, or if they just started slipping. At least the American tries to speak German in the first five minutes, and then he just says Fuck It and starts speaking English. It's all good though, because the real Nazis are either really fucking slow or just concentrating on who's a Jew and who isn't a Jew to notice any of this at all. The movie never acknowledges that these guys are really English or American either, I guess the filmmakers just wanted us to figure that one out for ourselves. The only member of The Valkyrie Squad who seems to be really German is an interesting-looking typist chick who looks like Sarah Silverman fused with Princess Leia.
The American goes by the name "Stauffenberg" and he and his limey bros have meetings in nice houses filled with old white men and General Zod from Superman to discuss how they're going to kill this motherfucker. The old Brits give respect to homeboy because not only does he show up wearing an eye patch, but he also goes without a hand or most fingers. He at the very least, LOOKS committed. They get into the specifics of the plan, but I couldn't hear any of it because at that moment there was a loud RINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRINGRING from about two seats away from me. I looked over and saw this older gent taking out his huge Zack Morris cellular phone, trying to shut it off. Instead I hear some ladies voice on speaker or something so he starts pushing a bunch of buttons, and at that point all I could hear was BEEP BOOP BAWP BOOP BOOP BEEP and then the phone started rapidly ringing again. So then he BEEP BOOP BAWP BOOP BOOP BEEP's it again, but it's not working. Finally after a minute of this, the dude figures out maybe it's wise to take this Luddite shit he's going through OUTSIDE the movie auditorium. Maybe? By the time he left, Stauffenberg and his bros were done talking and all I got was that they were going to blow up Adolf the Cunt with a briefcase filled with explosives.
The plan's specifics also involve getting the Reserve Army to come in and help with the takeover, after sending Hitler to Hell where he fucking belongs, even though the Reserves will have no idea they're part of a coup. They'll just think they're doing their job. Here's where shit got a little unnerving to me. The major of the Reserve Army is played by this dude who played a Nazi in The Pianist and the problem was that I found this guy to be very charismatic, at least I did. They also put him in these situations that the audience might find a little sympathetic, like whenever heavy shit goes down, he happens to be in the middle of some shit, like doing his swim laps or getting his hair cut. Ain't that a bitch?
I'm sure most of us have had similar shit happen to us (except I'm sure most of you aren't fuckin' Nazis) like maybe you might be in the middle of a shower when the phone rings and you just fucking know it's some important shit you were waiting for, like a job maybe, or you're about to enjoy a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and your fucking neighbor knocks on the door to ask if you can help get her cat out of the air vent it somehow got itself into. Fuck. That cereal's gonna be fucking soggy as fuck when you get back, all because Mittens decided to play John McClane in the first Die Hard. Motherfucker.
Anyway, the way this dude plays this German you're like "you know, this major isn't such a bad dude, he's kinda cool, even" but then you remember that he's A FUCKIN NAZI and that leaves you feeling weird. What kind of shit is that? I guess moviemakers call that "third-dimensional characters" but this movie really isn't that kind of party. But if you're making a movie set during WW2 and you want a Nazi who's also a pretty decent dude, then I guess Thomas Kretschmann is your Aryan Superman.
Part of the Valkyrie plan involves a Reserve Army general named Fromm. He's basically to his fellow Nazis what Al Pacino was to his fellow mobsters in Donnie Brasco. This guy gets no fucking respect. He's always getting yelled at by his superiors and they even make him look like a bitch in front his boss Adolf by telling him to go get some fresh tea. Fromm's an asshole, though, so fuck him. You can tell he fancies the idea of this Valkyrie deal when Stauffenberg and Shaun of the Dead's step dad tell him about it, but at the same time he's against it. If this works, Fromm will hold a way higher position than he holds now and get some goddamned respect for a change. But he's also a pussy about taking the risk, preferring to stay as the bitch he is and take shit everyday from fat mustached assholes in ill-fitting uniforms. To make it worse, he threatens to fucking tattle on them if they bring this shit up with him again. So like I said, fuck him.
So Stauffenberg and the Valkyrie Squad are in it to win it, but he's got some concern involving his family. He's all about killing Cocksucker Adolf, but he also knows that if this plan fails then he's found out, and if he's found out, his wife and kids are gonna take that long ride down with him. That's just like life, isn't it? Sometimes you want to do some crazy shit, but then you can't because of the wife and kids. So take this as a lesson, folks: If you want to live life and take risks, don't get married and don't have kids. But if you do decide to get married and have kids, shut your bitch ass up about the shit you can't do anymore because you shoulda fuckin' known. I made that decision never to get married or have kids a long time ago, but it's pretty easy to make that decision when you look like me and have my shitty attitude, but I can see how that would be difficult for decent looking dudes with a sense of humor and a job and some money in the bank and who have the ability to attract women. But at least I can live my exciting life of never getting out of the shack and watching shitty movies and drinking myself into stupors all alone and if it's not so cold that night, maybe jerk off to porn. So take THAT, bitches!
There's a scene in the movie where Stauffenberg actually meets Ol' One-Nut at his vacation home, and it's interesting to see a Hitler who isn't always yelling or foaming at the mouth. He's played very calm but intense, and I was surprised to see him calmly go over and pet his dog (a German Shepherd -- who woulda thunk it?) and just be generally cool with people. You totally get the sense though that one wrong word would probably make this asshole snap and start acting all rabid and pounding on tables, like the Hitler we all know and love.
I like that they cut to a shot of his lunch during that scene; a plate of sauerkraut and potatoes and something else that isn't made of meat. It brings up how Da Hitla was a vegetarian, which always makes me smile. Most vegetarians I know are cool people, but sometimes you meet the occasional militant who will give you shit because you like a nice juicy rare steak and they go off about the poor animals and how meat is bad for you anyway and that it even brings out violent instincts in people and at that point I just yell HITLER WAS A VEGETARIAN and they usually go quiet but still give me that fucking look. Sometimes they come back with how he's only one bad example and I counter with, yes he's only one example of a man who accomplished the murder of SIX MILLION LIVES. Then she tells me to go fuck myself and I tell her to go to hell and next thing you know we're passionately making out in front of everybody and dry-humping on the table. Then I wake up.
I don't know why, but I thought this was going to be a long movie. Maybe because it's based on a pretty serious topic and because it was released in December. But it's not, it's about two hours with trailers and it has a good pace. At heart it's really just a solid caper movie, not some Important Movie That Will Make You Think, like most films of the season. I'm a sucker for caper movies, basically any kind of movie that features a scene with a group of dudes gathered around some kind of table, looking at a map or blueprints or schematics of something and going over what each guy is going to do and how & when they're going to do it, I'm down with. I love that shit. It's probably a guy thing, too. I mean, that asshole Dane Cook had a pretty right-on thought for a change when he said that all guys want to be part of a heist.
I would expand on that and say all guys want to be part of a secret plan to do shit; whether it's a plan to commit a heist, kill a motherfucker, or escape from somewhere, I think most if not all dudes would love the idea of being involved in something like that with their bros. Not for real, of course, but in that part of a man's brain where stupid fantasies that only men have pop up, alongside fantasies of scoring a winning touchdown in the Super Bowl or fighting alongside your bros in some kind of epic battle, or performing a kickass guitar solo in front of a crowded stadium of adoring fans. That's why Madden NFL, Call of Duty and Guitar Hero sell like fuckin' hotcakes.
Anyway, this is a good flick. Bryan Singer directed it and Way of the Gun dude co-wrote it. I think this is the first time since The Usual Suspects that they worked on something together, at least officially, not counting potential rewrites and shit. No way is it as good as Suspects, but you can't hold that kind of shit against them, that's a pretty fucking hard flick to top. It's definitely better than Superman Returns, the first X-Men movie and Apt Pupil. Not to mention that fuckin' Public Access movie he did. Wow, that makes Singer 3 out of 7 with me. Maybe I should stop cutting homeboy any more slack.
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