DVD Pick: Valkyrie (Special Edition)

Based on a true story, Valkyrie (2008) centers on a plot to assassinate Hitler. There's not much action in the film, and it's not so much a thriller as it is a deliberately paced procedural. Tom Cruise gives an adequate, if not entirely convincing, performance playing the lead, and he is well supported by a strong cast that includes Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson, Terence Stamp and Eddie Izzard. The movie was directed by Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men). Production values are high, with topnotch costuming, sets and locations.

Cruise portrays Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a wealthy aristocrat who lost an eye and a hand while fighting for Germany during World War II. Stauffenberg became the key man in a large-scale conspiracy that set out to not only kill the Nazi leader, but to seize control of the German government. The movie's central event is the assassination attempt that took place on July 20, 1944, at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's Eastern Front military headquarters located in what is now Poland. The film chronicles the preparation for the assassination, its implementation and the attempted coup that followed. The interest isn't in the final results — it's the details of what happens along the way that matter.

Valkyrie isn't a great film, but it's worth seeing because it tells an important story of the German Resistance, reminding us that not all Germans supported Hitler. More generally, it gives viewers the opportunity to rethink issues like self-preservation, pragmatism, treason, patriotism and heroism.

The two-disc Special Edition Valkyrie DVD set contains nearly an hour of video bonus materials. The best is "The Valkyrie Legacy," a 42-minute History Channel documentary. Here historians and spokesmen for the German Resistance Memorial Center talk about the events dramatized in the feature film. You can see archival photos of the real-life people depicted in the movie, and you can hear from two of Stauffenberg's children, one of whom was born in a concentration camp. The documentary shows that Berlin streets have been named for at least three of the 1944 conspirators, including Stauffenbergstrasse, named for the character portrayed by Tom Cruise.

There's also the so-so "The Journey to Valkyrie," a 16-minute making-of featurette in which cast and crew talk about the movie. Perhaps the most interesting thing concerns the Bendlerblock, the building in Berlin that during World War II was Supreme Headquarters of the Army. Because certain historical events took place at the Bendlerblock, it now has special significance, and German officials are fussy about permitting filming at this site. There were difficulties and delays in obtaining permission to shoot a key Valkyrie scene in the Bendlerblock courtyard, and before filming there, cast and crew paused for a moment of silence to indicate respect for the German Resistance.

The DVD set provides two separate feature-length audio commentaries, both containing a wealth of detail, much of which is probably only of interest to the hardcore. If you decide to tackle these, the one with Tom Cruise, director Bryan Singer and producer/screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie is of greater general interest. They state they were going for a broad audience and that they didn't want to punish the audience. They wanted to make a film in the tradition of The Great Escape (1963), The Devil's Brigade (1968) and Patton (1970), and Valkyrie is in many ways old-fashioned. For purposes of authenticity, the movie required lots of research, including plowing through Gestapo records. Nearly all the shooting was done in and around Berlin, much of it at legendary Babelsberg Studios, where famous films like Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930) were made. However, the North African scenes were shot in the California desert near Victorville.

In the second audio commentary, McQuarrie returns, this time paired with the other screenwriter, Nathan Alexander. McQuarrie claims the genesis of the idea for the screenplay came when he was touring Berlin in 2002 and saw a memorial plaque naming four soldiers, one of which was Stauffenberg. He learned that these were the only World War II military personnel honored by Germany, and he decided to write a screenplay to tell their story, although he never expected anyone would be willing to actually film it. His advice to aspiring screenwriters: "Write the movie that you want to see."

Below I have listed all the details for the two-disc Special Edition DVD set containing Valkyrie. The feature film, audio commentaries and video extras are on one of the two discs, while the digital copy is on the other. (Note: There is also a single-disc DVD edition that contains only the feature film.)

Release Date: May 19, 2009
Number of Discs: 2
Feature Film Runtime: 2 hours 0 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for Violence and Brief Strong Language
Widescreen (1.85:1), Color
English Dolby Digital 5.1
Spanish-Dubbed Soundtrack
French-Dubbed Soundtrack
English Captions for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Spanish Subtitles
French Subtitles
Audio Commentary by Tom Cruise, Bryan Singer and Christopher McQuarrie
Audio Commentary by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander
The Journey to Valkyrie (16 min.)
The Valkyrie Legacy (42 min.)
Digital Copy