Alas, Von Stauffenberg

Thank you, Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer, for (apparently) mucking up what should have been one of the flat-out awesomest movies ever.

Comments

Is that irony? I hope that's irony. Awesomeness is an ineffable quality, true, but it's difficult to imagine that something as unoriginal as Yet Another Nazi Movie would achieve it, with or without Tom Cruise.

There was a halfway decent TV movie about Von Stauffenburg's plot in the '80s, starring Brad Davis. You can probably dredge that up on VHS if you're sufficiently bored.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | April 9, 2008 10:42 AM

Awesomeness is an ineffable quality, true, but it's difficult to imagine that something as unoriginal as Yet Another Nazi Movie would achieve it, with or without Tom Cruise.

Maybe those bozos who do the awful genre "parodies" will come out with "Not Another Nazi Movie." When you need a few cheap laughs nothing beats genocidal fascism.

More seriously--the Nazi movie is a tired genre, but what seemed appealing about this was the fact that the protagonists are close enough to Hitler for him to exist as a villain, not just a representation of evil. That proximity also means that Hitler and the Nazi state can actually menace the protagonists in a way that's interesting and dramatic, as opposed to the way it's usually done (trotting out a stiff and sadistic SS colonel to make urbane comments while subjecting the heroes to torture, etc.).

There's also an apocalyptic atmosphere to late-World War II Germany (cities being burned and flattened by the US and Britain, the Soviets moving in, Hitler becoming even more sadistic and unstable) that could make it a good setting for a action-drama about soldiers involved in a doomed conspiracy.

Posted by JB | April 9, 2008 11:36 AM

Cruise looks really silly in that picture.

Posted by roac | April 9, 2008 11:51 AM

They ought to try a new angle with the sub-genre. Perhaps a film about the "good Nazi", John Rabe, who saved the lives of untold Chinese refugees during the Nanking Massacre? Or if you still want to film militaristic Germans, how about WWI's Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck?

Posted by Quietus | April 9, 2008 1:29 PM

...if you still want to film militaristic Germans, how about WWI's Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck?
"Out of Afrika"? (apparently, Isak Dinesen actually did sail to Kenya on the same ship as von Lettow - he got off in Dar es Salaam)
The war in east africa is too sprawling and weird to work well as a film. interesting idea though.
In the west, however (maybe Cameroons?), it reads like Heart of Darkness as written by Evelyn Waugh.

Posted by Pierre de Fermat | April 9, 2008 4:29 PM