Good Will Hunting - Movie Review

On popular demand from Shiva, one of my good friends and an old mahabore faithful, here comes a review of one of my all time favorite movies Good Will Hunting. Now this is one movie which I can never manage to ignore whenever it plays either on Star Movies, HBO or any other movie channel on TV. In fact I remember at least 2-3 occasions where of my own accord, I have actually popped in the DVD and seen this movie end-to-end without any interruptions.

The story itself deals with Will Hunting (played by a relatively young and inexperienced Matt Damon) who is a janitor at MIT (yes, the original Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and well, for lack of a better term, is on a rampage of ruining his own life. The fact that he was an abused foster child in his younger days removes every iota of self confidence and optimism in the kid, and he uses every opportunity to put down himself both in front of his friends, and in front of the world at large.

However, the kid is gifted with a genius level intellect, amazing memory and an uncanny talent for mathematics. This is proven when Will solves a difficult graduate-level math problem from algebraic graph theory, during the course of cleaning up a classroom. This brings Will in contact with Prof Gerald Lambeau, a Fields Medalist. By the time the Prof tracks down the person who has solved the problem, Will lands himself in prison for beating up a local bully.

The good professor brings out Will on his personal supervision to study mathematics, under the condition that he sees a therapist. While the math part goes on decently enough, Will with his attitude issues, ends up pissing off the first five psychologists that the Prof has him visit. These sequences make for interesting viewing as Will ends up irritating them and ensuring that they don’t want to see him again in reasonably innovative ways. Ranging from incidents in their earlier lives to the books they read, Will ends up psycho-analyzing the shrinks themselves causing quite a flutter during the sessions.

Prof Lambeau finally ends up approaching an estranged old friend Sean Maguire (Robin Williams in an awesome role) who happens to have grown up in the same neighborhood as Will. Sean manages to break through Will’s tough exterior and ends up convincing him to date Skylar (Minnie Driver in a memorable role) a young woman Will meets at a bar.

However, things go horribly wrong between Will and Sean when Will as usual resists any attempts to try and civilize him and put him in a research assistant’s job. Whether Will Hunting finally achieves his potential, whether his relationship with Skylar takes off, what happens to Sean Maguire, these are a few answers which will make sense only when seen in the movie, rather than reading about them in this review.

One interesting trivia about this movie is the fact that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (who plays a good friend of Will’s in this movie) actually won an Academy Award in 1998 for Best Original Screenplay. While I am quite sure that most of us know both Damon and Affleck as reasonably good actors, I am not sure how many of us actually knew that these guys were behind this brilliant movie.

What works for me in this movie is the fact that it purely deals with human emotions from a very down-to-earth perspective. Will’s anger, his absolute disrespect for anything good in life, his perennial pessimism are all justified by the incidents that he narrates of his childhood. Sean’s sober behavior, his dull dress sense, his perennial sense of sorrow are all justified by his wife’s struggle with cancer and the loss of his true love. All of these characters are who they are because of strong reasons and not just like that.

This is one movie which I would recommend to all the people who like either Matt Damon or Robin Williams as it gives them roles very different from the usual run-of-the-mill typecast roles that they usually get. The two of them bring refreshingly different aspects of their acting talents out in this movie.

Cheers……..Jam

Related links –

Wikipedia link

IMDB link

Box Office Mojo link

Rotten Tomatoes link

Read more...

Reign of Fire - Movie Review

Now I personally have always liked well made science fiction movies which involved a nice dose of action sequences. And so when Star Movies recently played “Reign of Fire” I immediately plonked myself in front of the TV and ensured that I kept the remote away to prevent me from watching something else. The fact that the movie also starred Christian Bale in his pre-Batman days also meant that I had to watch this movie completely this time around.

The movie itself takes place in the near future where dragons have pretty much taken over almost the entire world with just a scattering of humans surviving the scary fire-spitting beasts. Quinn, one of the survivors of the dragon fires, lives in Northumberland alongwith a small community of survivors. Their hope is to outlast the dragons, wait until they die of starvation and then try to live a normal life. Unfortunately for Quinn and his men, they are running out of food themselves without any means to grow more.

Their lives are interrupted by the arrival of Denton Van Zen (played wonderfully well by Mathew McConaughey) and his group of heavily armed men. They narrate tales of how they killed dragons all over America and have flown over the Atlantic as part of their travels. They also narrate their hypothesis of how they think that there is one alpha male dragon who is germinating all these other female dragons. Their findings have led them to believe that this alpha male is located in London.

Upon being refused help by Quinn in this insane quest, Van Zen and his unit make their way to London. On the way though they encounter a road block where the male dragon arrives and incinerates all of them except Van Zen and Alex, the chopper pilot. The dragon then backtracks on Van Zen’s path and all but burns down Quinn’s castle down to the ground.

This spurs Quinn into action and the three of them make their way into London for a final showdown with the alpha male. Whether they succeed or not is what makes up for one of the most scintillating climax action sequences in recent times.

What works for this movie is the fact that it takes a tried and tested theme of good versus evil, a huge beast which can easily kill all humans in one shot, the lone hero who beats all odds to fight and ultimately triumph over evil. Plus the fact that it has Christian Bale who lends just that bit of the human emotion of fear and uncertainty, a bit more of humanness to the heroism of the character makes it all the more interesting. Add to this the fact that I am a sucker for good action sequences, which this movie has a generous dose of, and Reign of fire becomes a good movie for me.

All in all, a must watch for any die-hard action movie aficionado.

Cheers……..Jam

Related links –
Wikipedia link
IMDB link
Allmovie link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Metacritic link
Box Office Mojo link

Read more...

The Wrestler - Movie Review

The Wrestler chronicles some events in the life of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a professional wrestling superstar of the 80s, who is well past his prime and now wrestles on weekends for various independent wrestling promotions. The title credits of the movie show us various snippets of The Ram’s past glory with newspaper clippings, TV show scenes, etc, which serve to remind us that The Ram was not a wrestler to be messed with during his prime. In fact, some of these vintage moments actually remind of Hulk Hogan and his Hulkamania days, well, at least some bits of it. The fact that I am a fan of professional wrestling, particularly of the WWE made these credits a little nostalgic for me.

In any case, the movie takes up where The Ram is now wrestling for peanuts on weekends, and during the weekdays, he has a job at a supermarket where he does odd jobs to keep the rent and bills paid. During some nights though, just to get rid of his loneliness in life, he goes over to a strip club, where he has a soft corner for a stripper named Pam (Marisa Tomei, in a nice role), stage named Cassidy. Now Cassidy herself is facing a career crisis, due to her age which has waned her beauty, and consequently her appeal with her clientele.

Life is going on as usual for The Ram with his wrestling, supermarket job and visits to the club. But then his increasing age, and his usage of steroids to be able to keep his muscles gleaning and nice for public display end up taking its toll on his interiors. He suffers a heart-attack immediately after a ‘hardcore match’ in one of his events. This necessitates a bypass operation and The Ram is told by his doctor that his heart cannot support any more steroid usage or for that matter even wrestling. This forces Randy to cancel his upcoming 20^th anniversary match against the Ayatollah, and take up a full time job working at the supermarket’s deli counter.

In a moment of weakness, he talks about his estranged daughter Stephanie to Cassidy. Cassidy then suggests that Randy make up with his daughter and get back on talking terms with her. Taking this suggestion, Randy makes up with his daughter and they agree to meet for dinner on the coming weekend.

Cassidy’s rejection of Randy’s advances disappoints him and one thing leads to another, and Randy ends up missing the weekend dinner with Stephanie. This leads to Stephanie angrily telling him how he has never been and could never ever truly be a father to her. She also forbids him from meet her again. All of these incidents coupled with the fact that the supermarket customers start recognizing him as The Ram lead to Randy losing his cool with the entire situation and getting back into wrestling again.

What happens at the end of the movie is for you to see and come back here and comment about.

There were lots of things which I liked about this movie and I shall list down a few of them here. As stated earlier, most of my teenage sports viewing revolved around WWE wrestlers and the various Pay Per View events conducted by them. So I intuitively have a decent understanding of the business itself and to some extent the lives of these wrestlers. This movie therefore helped me reinforce some of my beliefs about professional wrestling and the wrestlers themselves. This movie therefore was a must watch for me anyways.

Mickey Rourke as The Ram beautifully portrays the fall from grace of a hugely fan-favorite wrestler to an old man whose body simply refuses to co-operate with him. The absolute lack of respect that he encounters in the world outside the ring is also depicted very well in the movie. This probably is why all the old wrestlers keep coming back to the ring time and again, if not for serious matches, at least for the odd public appearance. I guess the ‘squared circle’ is probably the only place in the ring that they feel most comfortable in.

Marisa Tomei in her role as the ageing stripper completely blows viewers off their feet, both with her oozing sensuality, as well as with her portrayal of a caring mother and a friend to The Ram. In fact, she plays a reasonably pivotal role in The Ram’s life by getting him back in touch with daughter, albeit for a short period of time.

Overall I personally believe that no director can make a better movie about professional wrestlers that Darren Aronofsky has with this particular movie. He captures the human side of a professional wrestler and his life so well that this pretty much becomes a ‘must-watch’ movie for anybody who likes wrestling and wrestlers.

Cheers……….Jam

Related links –

Wikipedia link

IMDB link

Allmovie link

Rotten Tomatoes link

Read more...

Milk - Movie Review

Milk starring Sean Penn in his Academy Award (Best Actor in a leading role) performance is based on real life incidents of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in San Francisco, California in the 1970s. This film chronicles the period of time in his life where Milk decided to ‘come out of the closet’ so to speak, from which time onwards he didn’t feel the need to hide his sexual preferences from the rest of the world.

The movie begins around Milk’s 40th birthday when he decides to move from New York City to San Francisco. It starts off with his foray into city politics, and some of the battles he waged from the Castro neighborhood. His political campaigns against any limitations on gay rights by Anita Bryant and John Briggs are given special attention in the movie as these campaigns were the ones which catapulted Milk into large scale public attention.

Politically Milk’s career doesn’t quite start with a bang as he loses the first two elections he contested in, to become a city supervisor. These defeats take a reasonable toll on his own ambitions and belief as to whether the gay community would ever be able to find a place for itself in the political system of the state. However, when he finally wins the election to a place in the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, he became the first openly gay man to be elected to public office of any kind in the USA.

In office though Milk learns that there is more to politics and people’s impressions of him than just meets the eye. He learns that even though people on the street might hate him, they do so only because of his sexual preferences, however, politicians are a very different breed of people who make and break friendships purely based on circumstantial convenience. Case in point being Dan White, a fellow supervisor.

White initially hates Milk for all the public and media attention that he gets wherever he goes and whatever he does. The fact that White is a Vietnam veteran and religiously conservative also doesn’t help the fact that he anyway cannot stand Milk for him being so openly gay. However, he enters into a political understanding with Milk which he anyways finally ends up disrespecting. As mentioned before, trusting White probably one of the biggest mistakes that Milk would make in his life as it would ultimately lead to his death.

A bulk of the movie deals with how Milk and his supporters try and successfully lead a nationwide fight against ‘Proposition 6’, an initiative to ban gay and lesbians and anyone who supported them from working in California’s public schools in any capacity. In fact, this is pretty much the central plot point in this movie.

Another interesting aspect of this movie is the fact that it goes in reasonable detail about Milk’s love life and how his career and public life ended up spoiling it completely for him. His first partner, Cleve Jones leaves him as he hates being second fiddle when compared to Milk’s political career. His next partner, Jack Lira came across as a reasonably obsessed partner who couldn’t stand Milk spending time with anybody or anything else at all. In fact, both these people serve to inform the audience that despite the fact that Harvey Milk was able to give so much hope to gays and lesbians in America, he himself was probably a lonely man at least during the latter part of his life.

What works for me in this movie is that despite the fact that it is a political movie, the screenplay is quite taut with adequate action happening at a nice pace. Sean Penn manages to portray his character with reasonable ease which is probably why he ended up winning the Academy Award anyways. Special mention must be made to the Art Direction department and the Costume Designers for getting the montage of 1970s America spot on.

In my personal opinion, this is one movie which all of us must necessarily watch, if not for anything else, to realize that gays and lesbians are as human as the rest of us. This movie will teach us to be more inclusive of them in our daily lives and hopefully will make us more tolerant than we already are.

Cheers……….Jam

Related links -

Official site

The film's script

Wikipedia link to the movie

Wikipedia link to Harvey Milk

IMDB link

Allmovie link

Box Office Mojo link

Rotten Tomatoes link

Metacritic link

Read more...

Michael Clayton - Movie Review

It is a reasonably safe assumption that any movie starring George Clooney, Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton will be a watchable film. Despite the fact that the main driver of any movie, in my opinion, is the script, the screenplay and then the casting, these are a few actors who ensure that they make the most of the characterization given to them, and ensure that maybe even a mediocre movie becomes at least watchable. Given this, it must be said that Michael Clayton is anything but a mediocre script, and this coupled with the fact that the three names mentioned above have lent their performances to this movie makes it one of the must-watch movies of recent times. Warning for all the die-hard action flick fans, this movie relies purely on dialogs, dialogs and more dialogs. So please do bring your concentration caps along when you are watching this movie.

Michael Clayton the movie deals with the attempts of the protagonist to cope with a colleague’s apparent mental breakdown and the suit of a major client of his law firm being sued in a class action case involving toxic agrochemicals. The idea for this script stuck Director Writer Tony Gilroy when he was busy preparing his script for The Devil’s Advocate. He apparently came across various situations where there were goings-on in New York law firms that were much much more than what met the eye. He wanted to make a movie which tried to go behind the glass-walled façade that these high-end law firms presented to the world at large. Thus was born the idea of Michael Clayton, the story of a “fixer”, someone who dealt with and rectified difficult situations for law firms, not necessarily using traditional or conservative methods and protocols.

The movie begins with showing Clayton’s personal problems relating to his gambling problems and resultant debts owed by him. He then is called in by his law firm, Kenner, Bach & Ledeen to help out with a difficult situation involving his friend and colleague Arthur Edens (played wonderfully by Tom Wilkinson). As Clayton gets in to resolve the situation, he realizes that there is more than meets the eye to this particular class action suit.

Arthur is in possession of some United Northfield (U-North) classified documents which he is secretly using to build a case against U-North itself. This pretty much puts Clayton on a collision course with Karen Crowder, the General Counsel of U-North (Tilda Swinton’s Academy Award winning performance), who is pretty much willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that these documents don’t see the light of day, let alone be presented against the company in a court of law.

All of these situations pretty much end up complicating things further and further until they reach a point where Clayton has to utilize pretty much all of his tact, skill and competence to keep out of trouble and ensure that all parties involved are not antagonized enough to jeopardize their relationships. This leads to an awesome ending to the movie with some unexpected twists and turns which I will not divulge here for obvious reasons.

What works for me in this movie are George Clooney’s, Tilda Swinton’s and Tom Wilkinson’s masterful performances as main characters in the story, the taut screenplay which doesn’t go lax even for a moment’s notice, and the fact that the story doesn’t leave any loose ends when it finishes. However, as I mentioned before, this is one movie which relies heavily on dialogs and the spoken word to get its message across. And this could be one reason why people might be tempted to stop watching it mid-way. But then anybody who likes John Grisham books and the Perry Mason novels will love this movie.

Cheers………Jam

Related links –

Wikipedia link

IMDB link

Rotten Tomatoes link

Metacritic link

Box Office Mojo link

Allmovie link

Read more...

Frost/Nixon - Movie Review

For starters let’s get a few things cleared out first. The movie Frost/Nixon is a dramatization of events with a lot of cinematic license being taken by the filmmakers to make it a little more interesting than it actually was in reality. Case in point, various articles on the internet have pointed out that unlike as depicted in the movie, David Frost never actually got Richard Nixon to confess about anything in his interviews. If anything, whatever Nixon actually told in the interviews was a ‘carefully pre-planned confession’. So if viewers actually end up thinking that Nixon confessed after having watched this movie, well, they were wrong.

Having said that it must be noted that this movie is one all American history buffs would really enjoy. I had seen and heard enough about the Watergate Scandal over the years, but had never really gotten around to reading up enough about it to figure out what the scandal actually was all about. Being a quizzer myself, it was also a must-know trivia that Richard Nixon till date remains the only American President to resign the office of his own accord. And I pretty much did most of my research on this scandal before I actually watched this movie so that I am able to grasp the contents of the movie in its entirety.

The movie itself is a cinematic adaptation of a British play of the same name, and it is a dramatized account of the Frost/Nixon interviews of 1977. The events took place in 1977, two years after Nixon had resigned from the presidency and was recovering from illness in California. David Frost, a British television talk show host who was desperately looking to regain lost glory in American television happens to catch Nixon’s resignation speech on TV and wonders what a series of interviews or talks with the former president might do to his career. He then gets in touch with Nixon’s publicist, Swifty Lazar and convinces him that these interviews might just be the thing to get the former president back in public memory.

Nixon agrees to do these interviews for sum of $600,000, but this in turn becomes the only reason that American news networks refuse to broadcast them as they did not believe in what they called ‘checkbook journalism’, a fancy term for ‘paid interviews’. Frost then goes ahead and funds the project personally with a few friends of his. He also recruits James Reston Jr and Bob Zelnick as researchers to this project of his which provides him valuable inputs into how to structure and conduct these interviews in a more meaningful manner.

What follows in the interviews can then be described as a ‘cat and mouse’ game where Nixon clearly wins the first 3 of the 4 rounds of interviews. Nixon completely bomards Frost with his style of answering questions, and his unique ability to turn all answers and questions into self-serving rhetoric. In fact, the movie depicts some of the answers in a light where Nixon turns out to be projected as the messiah of the American people around the world, which was miles away from what actually Frost and his team were trying to depict him as.

Am not going to give away the ending of the movie, and how Frost finally manages to outwit the former president as it will take away considerable fun from actually watching the movie. But I will dare say that anybody who watches this movie will not end up being disappointed. Even though the theme itself is reasonably serious and is based on actual events, the director Ron Howard and the screenwriter Peter Morgan make the entire proceedings on screen interesting enough to watch it in one go.

Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost have put in impressive performances which is exemplified by Langella’s Oscar nomination for Best Actor. Although I personally haven’t seen Richard Nixon in action, Roger Ebert (noted movie critic) mentions in one of his interviews that what works for the movie is that the actors don’t try to mimic these characters, but try to embody them which makes the movie a little more believable.

Cheers…….Jam

Related links –

Official website of the movie

IMDB link

Wikipedia link to the movie

Wikipedia link to the interviews

Rotten Tomatoes link

Metacritic link

Box Office Mojo link

Read more...

No Reservations - Movie Review

I happened to catch this heart-warming movie "No Reservations" sometime recently on Star Movies and boy, was I glad I stayed up to see this entire movie or what. Although this movie has nothing earth-shattering or immensely path-breaking to write about, the fact that it conveyed a simple, yet reasonably strong message using an easy-going narrative was what makes this a must-watch movie as far as I am concerned.


The movie starts off with the depiction of Master Chef Kate (beautifully portrayed by Catherine Zeta-Jones) who is, for lack of a better term, a control-freak as far as her kitchen in concerned. She lets her life be defined by the fact that she is pretty much the best chef in town who is so damn good at her job that she probably doesn't need anything else or anyone else define her. She is so much of a workaholic that her boss forces her to see a therapist every week, who in turn ends up hearing more about her recipes, and her love for cooking more than anything else.


Kate's life is turned upside down when her sister is killed in an accident and her niece Zoe (played by the cute Abigail Breslin) moves in with her. While Kate is trying to settle her niece down at her home, her boss hires a stand-in sous chef Nick (wonderfully played by Aaron Eckhart) at the restaurant. While juggling between her new house-mate and her restaurant, Kate begins to realize that there probably is just that bit more to life than just food and recipes and cooking. And the fact that Nick is better able to connect to Zoe and become friends with her faster than Kate is able to complicates matters even further.


What follows in the movie is Kate's ultimate realization of what she wants to do with her life, Zoe's reconciliation to the fact that Kate after all is not too bad to live with and Nick ending up showing both the girls some joy and happiness in their lives. Albeit, a regular romantic film, this movie will stay with me for a long time simply because of the fact that this will remind all workaholics that there is more to life than just their jobs. This will teach them to be defined by who they are rather than what they do for a living.


Cheers........Jam


Related links -
Official site
Wikipedia link
IMDB link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Allmovie link
Metacritic link
Box Office Mojo link

Read more...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Movie Review

Now the tough part about making movies out of stories like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" is the fact that you have to be able to adapt it to the big screen in a manner that it actually retains audience interest for the proposed duration of the movie. This coupled with the fact that most audiences worldwide would actually lose interest if the length of the movie is anywhere more than 120-150 mins (and this is a stretch) makes it practically impossible for an interesting and wonderful story such as the Benjamin Button one to be properly translated into a coherent movie. But I personally absolutely loved what Eric Roth (screenplays such as 'Munich', 'Forrest Gump' under his belt) and David Fincher (director of 'Alien','Seven','Fight Club','Panic Room' among others) have done with the lovely short story of Benjamin Button authored by F Scott Fitzgerald.


The crux of the movie (although public knowledge by now) deals with the fact that here is this kid who is born 'old' in the sense that although he is a baby he is born with the appearance and the physical maladies of a 80 yr old man. His father, Thomas Button dismayed by the kid and angered by the fact that his wife died at childbirth abandons him on the porch of an old-age nursing home. Queenie, the caretaker of the home brings up the child as her own son and names him Benjamin. The boy grows up (or is it down) seemingly ageing in the reverse as he grows older (or is that younger). Just the fact that the protagonist of the movie is ageing backwards pretty much throws all conventional ideas about a coherent story out of the window and this is what makes the story of Benjamin Button a curious one and an amazingly interesting one.


Through the course of his life, Benjamin comes across Daisy (a character portrayed wonderfully by the talented and elegant Cate Blanchett) at various stages. From his first encounter with her when he was 12 yrs old (in regular chronological terms) till the time he actually dies in her lap when he is 85 yrs old, Daisy forms an integral part of his life. The particular relationship and chemistry they share reminds viewers of Eric Roth's treatment of Forrest Gump and Jenny from 'Forrest Gump'. Not that I have any complaints against that, considering that most good movies almost always have an underlying love story at their core.


Another small but significant role in the movie is played by Tilda Swinton who plays Elizabeth, Benjamin's first real 'love interest' so to say. Although she has screen-time of only around 10-12 mins, she leaves an indelible stamp on the movie and the proceedings. I guess that's why she is as acclaimed an actress as she is today. This part of the movie still remains etched in my memory for the sheer simplicity and class with which it has been handled and filmed.


I personally would love each and every one of the readers here to watch the movie for themselves and judge it. But the following are some of the things that really worked for me in 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'- a reasonably rivetting screenplay where the dull moments are few and far between, masterful performances by Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, the attention to detail paid by the Art and Set Direction department, the sheer breadth of human emotions dealt with in the movie.


However, as mentioned before, on more than one occassion this movie reminds you of 'Forrest Gump' in terms of the fact that the leading lady keeps coming back into the protagonist's life time and again. And the sheer simplicity with which the protagonist leads his life also reminds viewers of Forrest Gump at times.


I would still watch this movie at least once simply because all the pros easily outweigh the cons by far.


Cheers........Jam


Related links -


Official website
Wikipedia link
IMDB link
Rotten Tomatoes link
Allmovie link
Box Office Mojo link
Metacritic link

Read more...

Valkyrie - Movie Review

Now I personally am a big enough fan of both Tom Cruise and director Bryan Singer (of "The Usual Suspects", the X-Men series and "Superman Returns") that I didn't require too much more to get me interested in "Valkyrie". However, ever since just before the Oscar Awards this year, all the news that I heard about the movie, and the fact that it was a WW-II movie pretty much made it mandatory that I caught this movie before it became too old and too cold (read 'not hot news anymore' kind of cold).

The movie deals with actual events depicting a plot by some German Army officer to assassinate Adolf Hitler during 1944, the fag end of WW-II. The group of officers planned to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country after killing Hitler to ensure that the remaining Nazi officers don't continue what the Fuherer had started. Now if that isn't exciting enough a theme to make a movie with, here's a sampling of some of the star-performers that this movie boasts of - Tom Cruise as Claus von Stauffenberg, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy and Terence Stamp, all wonderful actors and performers in their own right, coming together to form one of the most formidable ensemble casts assembled for a movie in recent times.

The story primarily revolves around Stauffenberg's disillusionment with Hitler and his treatment of the German Army in general, and his genocidal attitude towards millions of Jews. When Stauffenberg is injured in Tunisia, North Africa where he loses two fingers and an eye, he is then transferred to German Army Headquarters in Berlin, where he encounters a secret committee consisting of politicians, German army officers and other Government servants who have been secretly plotting to assassinate Hitler, albeit unsuccessfully so far. His first meeting with the committee doesn't quite sit well with the 'powers-that-be' who are reasonably offended by his open criticism of the methods tried by them to get rid of Hitler. However, when he comes up with the concept behind Operation Valkyrie, and is crystal clear with the view that it wouldn't be enough just to kill Hitler, but also necessary to nullify the effect of the Nazi Secret Service, the committee is convinced that Stauffenberg just might be the right person to achieve their long nurtured goal.

Von Stauffenberg then uses his position in the German Army HQ to carefully redraft Operation Valkyrie to give more powers to the Reserve Army, making it more conducive for them to dismantle the entire Nazi regime after killing Hitler, by overthrowing the SS and imprisoning Hitler's closest advisors. How and whether Stauffenberg succeeds in executing Operation Valkyrie successfully is something that makes up the rest of the movie. Some of the most interesting bits of the movie involve how Stauffenberg enlists the support of other army officers, how he plans out the entire sequence of events, how he puts things in motion. I am unwilling to disclose anything more about the movie for the fear that it might just give away too much, which in this case would pretty much spoil the entire movie viewing experience.

One damp squib about the movie is the fact that it doesn't dwell enough on Von Stauffenberg's bitterness towards the Fuherer. The audience will probably fail to understand what exactly it is that drives this German patriot against one leader whose stated ambition it was to make the Fatherland, the ruler of all Europe, and possibly the entire world. That is something that baffles me to date as to what it is that drove this German Officer to pretty much put everything at stake just to ensure that Hitler was assassinated, and Germany was rid of him.

What works for this movie is the taut screenplay, the awesome ensemble cast all of whom put in competent performances, the setting of the movie - WW-II Germany, the fact that it tries to tell an unconventional story of how a handful of Germans tried to set right some of the wrongs committed by their leaders, Bryan Singer's masterful treatment of this subject, and above all Tom Cruise's portrayal of Claus Von Stauffenberg. This probably would rate high up there as one of the best performances of his career so far.

Cheers........Jam

Related links -

Official website of the movie

Wikipedia link

IMDB Link

Allmovie link

Box Office Mojo link

Rotten Tomatoes link

Metacritic link

Read more...