Valkyrie

Valkyrie is a 2008 thriller based on a true story – the last of fifteen known attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler. It boasts a superb cast and is thoroughly watchable. I didn’t know the details of the story, and was fascinated to learn how close the conspirators came to success with their daring and courageous plan.

The leading character is Colonel von Stauffenberg, played by Tom Cruise. Hostile to Hitler, and the barbaric ways of the Nazis, he is badly injured while serving in North Africa. He returns to Germany to join a conspiracy to bring the tyrannical rule of the dictator to an end. The plotters are played by a galaxy of stars, including Kenneth Branagh, Terence Stamp and Bill Nighy, while Tom Wilkinson’s character equivocates, trying to figure out which side it’s safest to be on.

You know how it is all going to end, but – as with The Day of the Jackal – the journey towards the final conclusion is made engrossing by the story-teller’s art. As with Frederick Forsyth’s first and best novel, the description of the way events unfold is done with great skill and the characterisation, although economical, is effective.

The director is Bryan Singer, and the writer Christopher McQuarrie (with Nathan Alexander) and the same partnership was responsible for that brilliant and ingenious crime thriller The Usual Suspects. Valkyrie is not as memorable as the earlier film, but is nevertheless interesting as well as entertaining.

Before the Frost

Swedish television adapted Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander books for the small screen before the BBC got there with the recent series starring Kenneth Branagh. Thanks to Roger Cornwell of Cornwell Internet, I’ve just watched one of the shows, Before The Frost.

I haven’t read the book which sourced the tv programme, but I did find it enjoyable viewing. The actor who plays Wallander, Krister Henriksson, is less obviously charismatic than Branagh, but I liked his rather shambolic interpretation. The story features the cop’s daughter, Linda, who joins her father’s police force only to become personally involved in a bizarre mystery with origins in a horrific real-life event.

Like a number of other Mankells, this one opens with a vivid, horrific and baffling scene – an attack on swans. This is witnessed by an elderly woman who is out mapping abandoned pathways through the woodland. She suffers an accident and is incapacitated, making her easy prey for the villain of the piece. When her daughter reports her missing, Wallander comes on to the scene.

It’s a dark story, but compelling, and as usual insight is offered into a particular aspect of society of which Mankell disapproves – to say more would be giving too much away. I’m glad to have seen it – thanks, Roger.

The Proposition

William Hurt is an actor I’ve admired ever since I came across him in that brilliant movie Body Heat. He was superb as the not very competent lawyer Ned Racine, and in the years that have followed, his acting range has earned him well-deserved acclaim.

In The Proposition, set in Boston in the 1930s (the film came out ten years ago and is not to be confused with an action thriller of the same name), Hurt plays the part of an apparently chilly and very wealthy man called Arthur Barret. Arthur is highly successful and is married to a beautiful writer with feminist inclinations (Madeleine Stowe.) The snag is that Arthur is sterile. He wants an heir and his wife wants to give birth to her own child. So they come up with a proposition – an intelligent young man will be recruited to impregnate Mrs Barret, and paid handsomely on the basis that he has no claim upon the child.

Needless to say, this dodgy arrangement runs into all kinds of trouble. Further complications ensue when a recently appointed priest, played by Kenneth Branagh, starts to take a less than altruistic interest in Arthur’s wife. And it turns out that the priest has a secret of his own to hide.

The story involves a murder, but it would be a stretch to call it a crime movie. From the start, the music very definitely signals that this is not a mystery, and it must be said that the film suffers from a certain lack of pace, even though there are several moments of high drama. But although it wasn’t what I was expecting, I found it a watchable and thought-provoking drama, with acting of high quality.

Wallander

I enjoyed the first episode of the BBC’s major new series 'Wallander', watching it belatedly as usual. Kenneth Branagh heads a top-notch cast and I felt he caught the humanity of the Swedish detective very well.

The story chosen to introduce the series was not the first Wallander book that Henning Mankell wrote, but rather his CWA Gold Dagger winning novel Sidetracked. It was also the first Mankell that I read, and a good choice to open with, because of the startling and utterly shocking scene with which the story begins – a young girl walks into a rape field and sets fire to herself. It made a great impression on me when I read the story, and the televised version was equally powerful.

It may be heresy to say so, but in some ways I preferred the tv adaptation to the book. The pace was brisk, but more importantly, the build-up to the revelation of the identity of the culprit was handled more deftly. Wallander’s relationships with his father and daughter were nicely judged and the production values high. I shall certainly be watching more of 'Wallander'.