In “Operation Valkyrie – The Stauffenberg Assassination” Tom Cruise played a historical figure: the Hitler assassin Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg. That didn’t stop ‘X-Men’ director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie (‘Mission: Impossible 5-8’) from presenting the star as a kind of superhero here. You can read how they did this and why this approach works surprisingly well later in this article.
“Operation Walküre – The Stauffenberg Assassination” will be broadcast today, February 16, 2024, at 10:30 PM on RTL 2. Alternatively, you can currently watch the historical thriller with a regular subscription to the streaming service MagentaTV. The FSK-12 title is also available on Blu-ray, DVD or paid video-on-demand:
In addition to Tom Cruise, a whole team of world-famous actors appeared in front of the camera for Singer. Among them were Kenneth Branagh (“Tenet”), Bill Nighy (“Love Actually”), Carice van Houten (“Game Of Thrones”), Terence Stamp (“Last Night In Soho”) and Tom, who sadly passed away in 2023 Wilkinson to ‘Michael Clayton.’
There were also numerous local stars on the cast list – including Matthias Schweighöfer (“Girl You Know It’s True”), Thomas Kretschmann (“King Kong”), Christian Berkel (“The Experiment”), Wotan Wilke Möhring (“Who Am I ? “), Waldemar Kobus (“Black Book”) and Tom Wlaschiha (“Stranger Things”).
“Operation Valkyrie” on RTL 2: that is the story
Wehrmacht Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Cruise) was seriously injured at the front in North Africa in 1943. Disillusioned by the war and convinced that Hitler (David Bamber) will bring about the downfall of his beloved homeland with his ambitions for world power, he returns to the German Empire. After recovering, he joins forces with a group of high-ranking officers (including Branagh, Stamp and Nighy) and plans to assassinate the leader.
Under the leadership of Stauffenberg, a promising, but also complex and therefore extremely risky coup is designed: in addition to a bomb attack on Hitler, control of the entire German army must be taken at the same time. It is clear to the conspirators that a dead Hitler alone would not mean the end of the Nazi regime.
On July 20, 1944, the plan came into effect with an explosion at the Führer’s headquarters in Wolfsschanze. Stauffenberg and the other participants assume the dictator is dead and spread the news of the successful overthrow. But Hitler survived with minor injuries – although the Nazi government did not initially make this public…
Stauffenberg as a tragic superhero
“Operation Walküre” was filmed in the summer of 2007 in Studio Babelsberg and in and around Berlin in as many original locations as possible. The opening scenes, set in North Africa, were staged in California. The production budget of the beautifully appointed and otherwise visually compelling film was almost $90 million – which wasn’t even half of what it cost to produce Singer’s previous work, “Superman Returns.”
As our good 3.5-star FILMSTARTS review by Christoph Petersen explains, the film presents Stauffenberg as a kind of historical superhero. The staging of the Nazi aesthetic in which the characters move is strongly reminiscent of that of the ‘Superman’ comics from the 1930s and 1940s. Moreover, Tom Cruise – despite the somber gray Wehrmacht uniform, eye patch and prosthetic hand – is a radiant high flyer. While his fellow soldiers all have rough edges and ambivalences, Colonel von Stauffenberg is a classic hero whose integrity is unquestioned from the first moment and who is willing to sacrifice himself for his mission without hesitation.
We all know how the movie should end. Yet Singer managed to deliver an exciting thriller right to the end with “Operation Valkyrie”. Intensive character moments with a chamber play atmosphere are cleverly and courageously combined with excellently filmed action scenes. As a viewer, you inevitably root for the conspirators so that their plan could somehow succeed.
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