It might be only fitting that a film about a phenomenon as racked with ambiguities as the wartime resistance within the German high command is itself vexed (but not quite defeated) by its own paradoxes and problems. Valkyrie, dealing with a secret mobilization plan so named and an attempt to use it against the Nazis who created it, is a watchable and intermittently memorable movie that does not delve as deeply as it could into its fascinating subject.

Designed to some extent by committee and arguably circumscribed artistically by the nonexcellence of Tom Cruise in the central role, Valkyrie is basically a thriller in which the outcome (Hitler survives the assassination attempt) is never in doubt. Several details of plot are not widely known and create suspense. But as I saw the bomb planted and watched the plotters rush to their getaway car, I thought about how Valkyrie could have been a movie about the dynamics of ideology and the psychology of patriotism, a movie about how Germans of genuine if imperfect moral character cooperated, until defeat was certain, with the foulest political obscenity of the century. It might even have shed some light on that enduring contradiction: How a culture so glorious and a tradition so distinguished could have been corrupted so profoundly, and from within.

Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenberg, a young colonel now remembered not only for leaving a loaded briefcase in Hitler’s briefing room but for asking a question that needed asking: What do we do after we bump the boss? Operation Valkyrie was the answer, a national-emergency plan meant to thwart internal threats. All the conspirators had to do was portray the assassination as a plot by the SS and Gestapo, thus lending legitimacy (as if any were needed!) to Army orders to round up the psychos surrounding the Führer.

We meet Stauffenberg on duty in Africa, where he defiantly tells us, in movie thinkspeak, that Hitler is a monster and the enemy of Germany. Well, fine. But with his mind made up, something in drama already has been lost. We could have done with some back-story about his aristocratic birth and devout Catholicism, both of which had much to do with his opposition to the Nazis. What makes Stauffenberg so interesting in retrospect is not his pro-forma hatred of Hitler but his perception of the pogroms and propaganda as a betrayal of the ideals of motherland. Like many Germans of his rank, he probably initially viewed National Socialism with wary interest, as a potential route to the revival of old Imperial Germany, the supposed entitlements of which (such as the occupation of the Sudetenland) he supported. While Stauffenberg was resolved in his final opposition to Hitler, I cannot believe that the opinion was arrived at so easily. Then again, would Cruise have made a credible soul-searcher?

Other officers, of course, were in on the attempted coup, probably for various reasons. Obviously they shared the fundamental insight, after D-Day, that the war was lost and further destruction, in the absence of an armistice, was inevitable. Some good actors (Kenneth Branagh among them) impersonate the generals and colonels but their disputes seem to be mostly tactical and procedural. A lot of fussing, not much debate. The only figure rendered as morally ambiguous is General Friedrich Fromm, who contributed to the plot mostly by staying out of the way.

All the same, the action as directed by Bryan Singer moves smartly in the second half and the location photography transplants us convincingly to the 1940s. Stauffenberg is strafed with gunfire early in the film (he loses his right hand and two fingers of his left) but there is no open combat afterwards, nor any palpable Allied presence — further cinematic shortcomings worth mentioning. The Holocaust is hardly mentioned.
Still, there are some effective scenes involving Stauffenberg’s family life (including a retreat to a bomb shelter). Hitler’s Bavarian digs are frighteningly reconstructed. If there were an Academy Award for sub-supporting actor, David Bamber’s quietly revolting work as the Führer would surely merit a nomination.

Perhaps the final proof of the success of this film is that it made me think another trip to that creepy, bombed-out, windswept megalopolis — Berlin — would not necessarily be a bad thing. I would make a beeline for the courtyard of the Benderblock, the Army headquarters where the conspirators were executed. German authorities initially did not want any Hollywood cameras rolling on this significant spot. Cooperating was smart. Millions now know something about the plot and the people behind it. You could do worse than to be one of them.

Arthur Kaptainis is classical music critic for The Gazette.