Don't Mention The War!

There's a handful of films I think will be great entertainment this year; Star Trek, Transformers 2, Terminator Salvation. There's a few film this year that have the potential to be great; Avatar, Watchmen, Up. The more you anticipate these movie events the greater the disappointment if they let you down.

Thankfully, one film I had on both lists, Bryan Singer's Valkyrie, does no such thing. Charting the final of 15 failed attempts by German Citizens to assainate Hitler, is a brillient exercise in precise, considered film making.

The cast are uniformly suberb; no great backgroung detail is provided (it's simply not important when you've got actors of Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh performing amazing feats of subtlty to communicate character and emotion). Cruise, while not stretching his ability is well cast as the appointed leader of the hit squad, providing a dynamic and self-assured centre to hold the plot in motion.

But Singer is the real star here. As with all his movies, the script is stripped to it's bare minimum of scenes and dialogue, making it lean, mean and tightly focused. He chooses a perfect composition, a steady, long take and a finely judged character reation or dialogue deliver to generate tension and develop characters over choppy editing or forced action sequences.

It's refreshing to see a strong, old fashioned thriller over a 'modern action thriller like Eagle Eye (which I do really like, but not nearly as much as this) that gernerates thrills through the way the story is told, not just whats happening. There's virtually NO action..it's all through fear of capture and discovery that the dramtic screws are tightened.

So that's the first Top Ten movie of the year then. What movies are gonna join it?