Hello, my goblinites! After a night in the hospital, I have returned!
So, tiredness aside, I bring you the oh-so-familiar Movie Monday!
This week, I’ll be reviewing the movie I watched with my step-father on Father’s Day: Valkyrie!
Spoilers in green, as always.
Valkyrie is a movie about Colonel Claus von Stauffenburg, a German soldier during WWII who conspires with some of his fellow soldiers to assassinate Adolf Hitler to protect Germany from his tyrannical regime.
As the movie is based on a true story, they didn’t succeed. If you just thought to yourself, ‘that’s a spoiler, that should be in green!’ then you should leave my site and never return, because you are an idiot. That wouldn’t even be INFLUENCED by a true story. They’d have to say ‘loosely inspired by a fake story we heard one time while drunk’ to get away with that noise.
Anyhow, I watched it with my step father and uncle, both of whom are war nuts, and know their history quite well. They really loved the historical accuracy of the film, and constantly commented on the make and model of various planes, weapons, cars, and even a couple personal experiences in Germany.
Now, a point of interest. When the assassination attempt begins, the explosive is placed near Hitler’s feet, inside Stauffenburg’s briefcase, and it is knocked over and replaced on the other side of a table leg. From various sources, including my uncle the history buff, it was this six inches of movement that saved Hitler’s life. In addition, had the meeting been held in the originally planned location or had Stauffenburg not lost one of the explosives, it still would have taken Hitler’s life. You read right. Hitler was saved by a table leg and six inches of movement.
Now, according to the internets, the movie has its share of historical inaccuracies, which are as follows. (courtesy of IMDB)
1. Hermann Goering is not wearing his “Blue Max” WWI medal. It should have been around his neck, with his Iron Cross. Another character is correctly shown wearing his Blue Max.
2. When von Stauffenberg is recruited in the church, the camera pans up to show the bombed-out ceiling. Nuns and priests removed the stained glass windows from churches and buried them outside cities before the Allied forces began bombing Germany. If the ceiling was bombed out, the stained glass windows shouldn’t be there.
3. The building the German army barricades in Berlin is identified as the Ministry of Interior. It was actually the Reich Air Ministry. Today, it is the German Finance Ministry.
4. The aircraft Hitler rides, and which the plotters attempt to blow up, is a Ju-52 trimotor. In reality, Hitler’s aircraft at the time was the four-engined FW-200 “Condor.” None survived, so they couldn’t be used for filming.
5. In a number of scenes, Colonel Stauffenberg is seen wearing red stripes on his trouser legs. Only German Generals wore the red stripes.
Other than that, though, the movie had most all of its facts right as far as I can tell.
A number of people had problems with this movie, claiming it was boring and that is had poor acting, some even claim it just isn’t historically accurate.
However, I have yet to hear one good argument as to the lack of historical accuracy, the movie’s acting was fine, using the common babelfish ploy (where the viewer can understand other languages as their own) and the acting really pulled me in.
In fact, I think that most people who complained about this movie were simply misinformed by advertising. The commercials made this movie out to be a hardcore, run-n-gun action flick, which it is not. It is very much so a historical piece that centralizes on an assassination attempt.
The long and short of it is, in my opinion, that people need to stop seeing a man in a military outfit with an eye patch and assuming he’s Solid Snake. Stauffenburg isn’t gunna call Mei Ling, he isn’t gunna fight Vulcan Raven, and he isn’t gunna listen to J-Pop as an old man punching crazy women.
That being said, the advertising really did make the movie out to be more of an action movie, and that’s a shame. Valkyrie really was good, and you should watch it.
Glitchy Goblin gives Valkyrie a 7/10.
If the Director’s Cut tweaks the pacing a little, it would deserve higher.
Until next time, Goblinites, long live sacred Germany. -GG