BLU-RAY: GRAN TORINO


The Film:

Something mystical has happened to Clint Eastwood. Back in the eighties he was looked-upon as an ageing, increasingly-foolish has-been who was only worth a damn when packing a .44 Magnum. His habit of casting friends and, especially, lovers in his films made him a laughing stock and that was not greatly helped by his brief foray into local politics.

Every now and then he’d make a film like Pale Rider (1985) or Bird (1988), which would give everyone a moment of contemplative re-assessment, but it would then be followed by something like Heartbreak Ridge (1986) or The Rookie (1990) and he was right back there on everyone’s hit list.

Then came Unforgiven (1992), a film which won several Oscars (including Best Film and Best Director for Clint himself) and made both a popular and critical audience sit up and pay attention to him anew. Unforgiven looked back at the career of a violent man and counted the cost. It was, to most everyone’s mind, Eastwood nailing the coffin-lid on his own career as the death-dealing Man With No Name. It was his attempt at cleaning-up Dirty Harry, his shot at redemption and, as themes in Hollywood movies go, redemption is the biggy.

If his life were a movie, that would have been its final scene: Oscar acceptance speech, standing ovation, roll credits.

But his life isn’t a cliché-ridden movie and, remarkably, in the seventeen years since Unforgiven, as his early sixties rolled into his late seventies, where most directors and almost all actors would have hung up their spurs, he has gone on to do much of his best, most ambitious, most consistent and most personal work. He has finally proven that he’s vastly more versatile as a director than he ever was as an actor.

As with fifty-something directors like Spielberg and Little Ritchie Cunningham, seventy-nine year-old Clint has taken to making two films a year. Gran Torino is his second this year (and he already has his Nelson Mandela pic, Invictus in the can for next year).

Gran Torino is a story about … you guessed it … redemption … and it’s a Western. Yes, I know it’s set in modern-day urban Michigan, but its still a Western. Bear with me.

The film begins at the end … at the end of Walt Kowalski’s marriage, with him standing, statue-like at the side of his wife’s coffin, glaring disapprovingly at the family he simply doesn’t like. He sees what his granddaughter is wearing and growls. As his son observes: “There’s nothing anyone can do that won’t disappoint the old man.”

The truth is, he’s frightened and he’s alone and he responds to that like the old war-horse he is, by being aggressive. He glares despairingly at the Hmong Chinese family which have moved in next door to him and rumbles “Damn barbarians” not quite far enough under his breath for them not to hear. Yes, he’s a racist and yes, the fact that he’s of Polish extraction and therefore an immigrant himself, is significant.

His life revolves around his experiences in the fifties in Korea and now, without his wife to temper or distract him, the memories of the horrors he witnessed and perpetrated come back to overwhelm him fuelled, of course, by the Eastern faces he sees every time he glances over the lawn at his neighbours. As his padre ruefully comments, Walt knows more about death than life.

He also knows a lot about his 1972 Gran Torino which he never drives, save in and out the garage, and which sits on the drive where he can polish and admire it. It, like him, is a remnant of a different America. In this year or all years, when America finally wakes from its American Dream and puts a black man in The White House, when its automotive industry is experiencing the same meltdown as the rest of our economy, this wide-beamed gas-guzzler stands on Walt’s drive as a timely symbol of the passing of the ‘old’ vision of America.

As Walt comments, ruefully, he spent his entire post-military career building American cars (including the one he owns) and now his son sells Japanese ones. That encapsulates the generation gap in his family right there.

The culture gap between him and his neighbours is, surprisingly, an easier one to bridge. A scuffle on the Chinese family’s lawn spills over onto Walt’s and his response is pure Clint … the hairs go up on the back of the neck as he levels his rifle at the camera and growls out of one side of his mouth “Get off my lawn” a line which, delivered in that context, by the voice, accompanied by that squinty-eyed glare, will become another one of those Clint catch-phrases which develops a life of its own.

It’s a deliberate reference back to Unforgiven’s William Munny and, beyond that, to Josey Wales. It represents the way that the street gangs are something that Walt can identify with, a clear and present danger that he knows how to deal with. But this trademark, stereotypically Eastwoodian scene, will have repercussions because the boys he has shamed are the local gang. This matter will return to haunt him. But, meanwhile, the film shifts gear. The gratitude of the Chinese community and the sarcastic, honest intelligence of the neighbour’s daughter, Sue (Ahney Her), slowly melt the old man’s icy exterior and he slowly begins to realise that he has more in common with these “gooks” than with his own family.

This détente, through clever writing and intelligent performances, manages to stay just the right-side of daytime-TV-maudlin as the film’s middle act explores that age-old affinity between old-age and youth, between the old soldier and the grand-kids of the people he (almost) once fought.

The scenes Walt has with Sue and her shy brother, Thao (Bee Vang), are made all the better for the thin vein of humour that runs through them, which counterpoints the ominous shadow of Walt’s occasional coughing fits. Again, this stays just this side of melodrama because the dialogue is so economical and delivered with an unwaveringly wry, ironic tone. As I watched him in his tool-shed, affectionately patronising young Thao, I realised that Clint has turned into Walter Matthau, a loveable curmudgeon. Who’d’a’thought?

Walt’s wife’s last wish was for him to go to the church for Confession. But one has to be careful what one wishes for … because the redemption Walt has in mind is not what his wife, his priest or what we expect.

Like many a Western hero before him, he sits on the porch of his wooden house, with his dog, smoking and waiting for the bad-guys to turn up as, inevitably, they do. The build-up to the show-down is dealt with with an elegance and an eloquence of which John Ford would have approved. And, for a Western, however it dresses itself, I can think of no greater complement than that.

The Disc:

There aren’t a lot of extras on this disc but. Compared to the usual bare-bones first release Eastwood discs we get in the UK, there’s a veritable cornucopia.

The Eastwood Way: 20 mins

This is one of those shallow made-for-TV puff-pieces, which tantalises with a few hints at the process, but doesn’t get into any of the nitty-gritty.

The doc does discuss how Clint 'n’ Co. spent a lot of effort on fairly reflecting the Hmong culture, even though very little of that is there on screen for the uncultured eye to see. They also went to the trouble of casting Hmong actors from the very small Hmong community, which explains why so many of them are obviously not trained, professional actors which, in turn, explains why their characters come across as so genuine.

Even at 79 years old, Clint clearly isn’t scared of a new challenge, working on screen with so many untried first-timers but, behind the camera, it’s a very different story. Famously, there are no behind-the-scenes dramas on an Eastwood flick, because he is surrounded by a crew he has worked for decades, who therefore barely need any direction because they already know what he wants. This, of course, makes for fairly boring making-ofs, which is possibly why he rarely allows them.

Manning The Wheel: 9.20 mins

This is an interesting little think piece which discusses the way the motor car has become the American male’s expression of individuality. It underscores how the car is symbolic of Walt – and Clint – very polished, very impressive, very highly-regarded but, ultimately, an antique.

Gran Torino: More Than a Car: 4.00 mins

This is definitely the ‘and finally’ of the disc, being a montage of interviews with the men of the Woodland Dream Cruise … which is essentially a parade of vintage and muscle cars. Despite having deeper relationships with their cars than with human beings, several of these men come across as surprisingly articulate. They could still do with getting a life, mind.

And, for those easily distracted by shiny objects – I give this film a rating of: CCCC
Dir: Clint Eastwood
Writers: Nick Schenk, Dave Johannson
Stars: Grandad Clint, Ahney Her, Bee Vang, Christopher Carley
Dur: 116 mins
Cert: 15
Image © Warner Bros

TRANSFORMINATOR SALVATION

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The Absolutely Will-Not Stop Uncut Review (1,400 words)

A few years ago, when I was running a local cinema, I found myself having an argument with a representative of the BBFC about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) She had, some would say quite foolishly, offered herself up for a Q & A session at the Chichester Film Festival. My problem was with T3’s 12A certificate (I have serious concerns about the whole debilitating effect the 12A certificate is having on good cinema, but that’s another story).

You see, in the BBFC guidelines it clearly states that, in a 12A “violence must not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood … (with) occasional gory moments only” and yet, in T3, we have a scene where the female Terminatress sits in the back seat of a car, punches her arm through the body of the driver in front, seizes the wheel and drives along, with her victim’s blood and giblets dribbling off her arm. My question was “In what way can that be called ‘no emphasis on injuries or blood’?”. The BBFC woman conceded, with a shrug, “Yes, that was a bit of a 15 certificate moment in a 12A movie.” Well, I’ll get back to the various reasons that’s an infuriating and unsupportable response at a later date. For the moment, let’s just note that there is no such controversy surrounding Terminator Salvation (or T4 as I shall call it henceforth, for brevity’s sake) this is good wholesome end-of-the-world type stuff with no gratuitous sex or violence.

These days, in the drive to create more and more kiddie-friendly by-the-numbers action movies, the Hollywood studios must find new ‘creative’ sources to exploit, since the bottom of their ideas barrel has long been scraped away. So, what do they now do? They approach the same old ideas from a slightly different perspective. You see, if you look closely, you’ll realise that some of our most treasured film franchises have, for want of a better term, gaps in them. We’ll call this The Wonderful World of the Back Story:

Star Wars referred to “The Clone Wars” early on, but we weren’t allowed to see them … until now. Star Trek often made reference to Kirk and Co’s past, but only now do we get to see it (wait for some genius to think up the revolutionary notion of Young Jean-Luc on the Stargazer). Much was made of Wolverine’s forgotten years … well, they’re forgotten no longer. I imagine plans are a-brewing in the Doctor Who production office at the BBC to finally do something with that oft-teased Time War. And, finally, The Terminator’s war against the machines … glimpsed and hinted-at for twenty-five years is now, finally, here for all to see.

And, do you know what … we’ve seen it all before:

The titles and slow-crawl from the beginning of T1: check.
Helicopter attack from Apocalypse Now: check.
Soldiers creeping through dark factory corridors from Aliens: check.
Human resistance run from a submarine as in The Matrix: check.
Grey, burned-out landscapes from Reign of Fire: check.
Our hero ‘adopts’ a mute feral kid in the wilderness, as in Mad Max 2: check.
Giant robots to steal some thunder from Transformers: check.
Dog-fight in a canyon from ID4 (ironically not a sequel): check.
Falling in love with a humanoid machine as in Battlestar Galactica: check.
Motor-bike escape from The Great Escape (yes, really): check.
Make Skynet Central look like Mordor: check.
Christ-like resurrection as in just about every quest movie made since Star Wars: check and check.
Golden Gate Bridge has seen better days as in Superman The Movie, The Core, Xmen 3 etc, etc: check.
Showdown in a foundry with loads of fire, steam and sparks as in T1 and T2: oh yes!


You can almost hear the seventeen listed producers (yes, seventeen) feeding their favourite scenes into the script-writing machines, checking off their wish-list as they assembled this, for want of a more accurate term, script. But don’t try and follow the story that strings together these elements because it simply doesn’t make a lick of sense. The first key-note assault simply doesn’t bear thinking about too much, just enjoy the utterly convincing special effects and flowing camera work as we swoop in and out of a flying helicopter and then stay in it as it crashes down in the shadow of a mushroom cloud. Well, if Indiana Jones can be immune to radiation, why not John Connor, hm?

Then again, one can only assume that the plutonium in the missiles we saw flying at the end of T3 must have had a particularly short half-life, since this film is set less than ten years in our future and, in-keeping with that 12A certificate, there is nary a reference to the ‘f’ word (‘fallout’).

The special effects, photography and particularly the work done on the sound is exemplary. The visuals are never less than impressive and are occasionally gorgeous; which does rather make one think that Bale’s now legendary tirade against Shane Hurlbut, the Director of Photography, might have been better directed towards whoever programmed the script-writing machines.

Director “McG” … real name Joseph McGinty Nichol … does what he can with the material at hand, and it is certainly a McFeast for the eyes if not the mind but, let’s be fair, his track record doesn’t really suggest he’s quite the man to tease brilliantly persuasive performances out of actors working at their best, since it consists of two hyper-kinetic bubble-gum no-brainer McCharlie’s Angels flicks and a remake of McRevenge of the Nerds … yes, a re-make … ye gods … thank-you, Hollywood, we are not worthy of such magnificence … what’s that? Oh, tragically, the film was cancelled half-shot and will now never see the light of day. I think I may die of disappointment.

Ahem.

Throughout T4, the dialogue (deliberately) echoes T1 and T2, as though the script-writing machines were somehow self-aware that they were simply lashing-together their narrative from the recycled bits-and-bolts of better films. But, all this backward-glancing reminds us how revolutionary and magnificent those films were and how intellectually and emotionally vacant this one is by comparison.

The notion of an American-encompassing war (so-called because the rest of the world doesn’t get so much as a mention, just for a change, like) waged guerrilla-style in the ruins of the old world order, is something we have all experienced first-person through games like Halo and Gears of War; therefore our expectation and experience is so much higher than it was a quarter-century ago when Cameron first had tank-tracks roll over human skulls. This film needs to work harder to engage our interest and disengage our sense of disbelief. Unfortunately, one’s disbelief needs powers of flight to stay suspended when our heroes take refuge in a building in the middle of a flat, featureless desert only to have a fifty-foot-tall multi-ton Transforminator sneak up on them. Ole twinkle-toes Transforminator! But, on the other hand, it does give birth to robot motorbikes which are ultra-cool. I want one!

As for the so-called humans in the film, Christian Bale has taken on the mantle of John Connor and portrays him as completely different from Bruce Wayne. He delivers most of his dialogue at the shout, the rest at the growl, and all of it with a frown … see, no resemblance to The Dark Knight at all! The only point when he breaks his bullet-proof shield of full-on one-dimensional acting is when he almost smiles while delivering the “I’ll be back” line.

Throughout the film, Sam Worthington’s story is much the more engaging and he comes across as more humane. I appreciate that the message the script-writing machines are trying to communicate is that, for Bale, the war against the machines has turned him into a machine, but didn’t Cameron make that point far more succinctly and effectively with the development of Sarah Connor’s character in T2? Yes, I rather think he did.

So, in summary, I’m conflicted about this film. Parts of it are just down-right appalling, while other parts are jaw-droppingly impressive and the whole thing looks gorgeous. Rumours abound that some 40 minutes were cut from the film to stop it running to Watchmen-like lengths and, of course, those rumours further postulate that said 40 minutes may be put back in for the disc release. Don’t hold your breath. I can’t pretend that I’m going to lose sleep waiting for the predicted second and third film in this despite-popular-demand second trilogy of Terminator films but I can say that I predict Shane Hurlbut (here in only his second job as DP) will have a long and lucrative career making indifferent movies look far better than they actually are. They just won't have Christian Bale in them.
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Dir: Joseph McGinty Nichol
Stars: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard
Dur: 115 mins
Cert: 12A (of course)

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The Hasta La Vista Short-Cut, Baby (600 words).

These days, in the drive to create more and more by-the-numbers action movies, the bottom of their ideas barrel has long been scraped away. So they approach the same old ideas from a slightly different angle. We’ll call this The Wonderful World of Back Story:

Star Wars referred to “The Clone Wars” early on, but we weren’t allowed to see them … until now. Star Trek often made reference to Kirk and Co’s past, but only now do we get to see it. Much was made of Wolverine’s forgotten years … well, they’re forgotten no longer. I imagine plans are a-brewing in the Doctor Who production office at the BBC to finally do something with that oft-teased Time War. And, finally, The Terminator’s war against the machines … glimpsed and hinted-at for twenty-five years is now, finally, here for all to see.

And, do you know what … we’ve seen it all before:

The titles and slow-crawl from the beginning of T1: check.
Helicopter attack from Apocalypse Now: check.
Soldiers creeping through dark factory corridors from Aliens: check.
Human resistance run from a submarine as in The Matrix: check.
Grey, burned-out landscapes from Reign of Fire: check.
Giant robots to steal some thunder from Transformers: check.
Dog-fight in a canyon from ID4 (ironically not a sequel): check.
Motor-bike escape from The Great Escape (yes, really): check.
Make Skynet Central look like Mordor: check.
Christ-like resurrection as in just about every quest movie made since Star Wars: check and check.
Showdown in a foundry with loads of fire, steam and sparks as in T1 and T2: oh yes!

You can almost hear the script-writing machines checking off their wish-list as they assembled this, for want of a more accurate term, script. The special effects, photography and particularly the work done on the sound is exemplary. The visuals are never less than impressive and are occasionally gorgeous; which does rather make one think that Bale’s now legendary tirade against Shane Hurlbut, the Director of Photography, might have been better directed towards whoever programmed the script-writing machines.

Throughout T4, the dialogue (deliberately) echoes T1 and T2, as though the script-writing machines were somehow self-aware that they were simply lashing-together their narrative from the recycled bits-and-bolts of better films. But, all this backward-glancing reminds us how revolutionary and magnificent those films were and how intellectually and emotionally vacant this one is by comparison.

Christian Bale has taken on the mantle of John Connor and portrays him as completely different from Bruce Wayne. He delivers most of his dialogue at the shout, the rest at the growl, and all of it with a frown … see, no resemblance to The Dark Knight at all! The only point when he breaks his bullet-proof shield of full-on one-dimensional acting is when he almost smiles while delivering the “I’ll be back” line.

Throughout the film, Sam Worthington’s story is much the more engaging and he comes across as more humane. I appreciate that the message the script-writing machines are trying to communicate is that, for Bale, the war against the machines has turned him into a machine, but didn’t Cameron make that point far more succinctly and effectively with the development of Sarah Connor’s character in T2?

I can’t pretend that I’m going to lose sleep waiting for the predicted second and third film in this despite-popular-demand second trilogy of Terminator films but I can say that, despite what Christian Bale thinks of him, I predict Shane Hurlbut will have a long and lucrative career making indifferent movies look lovely.

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image © Warner Bros / Columbia

BLU-RAY: VALKYRIE


The Film:
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As you probably already know, this film tells the true story of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler during the Second World War … but, the problem is, you probably also know how successful it was. Fair enough, knowing the ending at the beginning didn’t do Titanic (1997) any harm but, with that, the spectacular sinking of the ship was almost incidental to the simpering love-story and the presence of lovely Leo, which drew so many teenage girls to the film and left nary a dry seat in the house.

This historical re-enactment features lots of wrinkly old men in uniforms talking about killing someone of whom the typical GCSE History student has never heard. I can’t imagine that will do much for the Hannah Montana/Twilight crowd, somehow.

As we know, whenever the Americans want to cast boo-hiss bad guys, they look to the Brits; well this film is set in a nation of boo-hiss bad-guys. So they’ve raided every theatre they could to assemble a veritable army of British thesps. All the usual suspects are there: Lord Sir Kenny Branagh (would any depiction of officious cruelty be complete without him?) Dame Bill Nighy (as twitchy as a violin-bow, and about as thin), the dictionary-definition of ubiquity: Tom Wilkinson and none-other than … Eddie Izzard? Oh, okay. Branagh compares Germany to Sodom … a place that is redeemable, if only one good man can be found there. Step forward the towering presence of … Tom Cruise … as Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg.

I wonder what the Germans make of the Americans attempting to rehabilitate their history entirely with Brits and Yanks (with the single conspicuous exception of Hollywood’s favourite rent-an-Aryan, Thomas Kretschmann)? With any luck, they’ll remake The Great Escape(1963) with the Germans playing the prisoners and Bruno Ganz in the Steve McQueen role, then we can find out how they feel.

The most effective scenes in the film are when we see Hitler himself – played by TV bit-part specialist David Bamber with a stab at a German accent (credit to him, no-one else bothered) because there is actually a real sense of threat as he sits there in his torture-chamber office, surrounded by the twisted freaks of his High Command.

Despite its trappings, this is definitely not a war film. After the first few moments, there are no battle-field scenes at all and, as such, it probably fairly reflects the war as it was experienced by the officers who ran it from behind their desks. So, it isn’t a hot-war film but it isn’t really an effective cold-war conspiracy thriller either because, ultimately, the suspense evaporates through our knowing more than the characters do. Worse, we simply don’t care about them because they are, without exception, stiff-necked, officious, middle-aged nazis. Grey people with grey morals in grey uniforms.

Clearly, director Singer and Co’s intention was to inform the world that there was resistance within the German elite. But, since we know their endeavours were futile and since we can’t care about any of them as people – because they are all one-dimensional soldiers – then this knowledge seems hollow and insignificant.

Maybe if Stauffenberg’s family weren’t side-lined so quickly by the film, maybe if we’d seen events from the perspective of the women and the children who were not responsible for the self-inflicted plight Germany was facing in the dying months of the war, maybe then we might have given a damn.

Maybe Singer should have funded the production of a proper documentary about Stauffenberg and got Cruise to narrate it, then he could have spent two years getting back to what he does best – making efficient, grow-up movies that do know which genre they occupy.
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The Disc:
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The short-comings of the film itself are more than compensated-for by the cornucopia of extras presented on the disc which are a pretty-exhaustive lesson in the reality of The Conspiracy.

Firstly, we have TWO entirely worthwhile audio commentaries:

Commentary One: Cruise / Singer /McQuarrie

This, in-keeping with the tone of all the extras, is a serious and collaborative commentary. It doesn’t fall into the sycophantic “Oh, he’s wonderful … she’s amazing” habit that many commentaries do, instead it’s all about the truth of the conspiracy and the efforts to retain that truth in the film-making process. Interestingly, Cruise views the film, at this point, from his perspective as the producer rather than as the actor.

Commentary Two: McQuarrie / Nathan Alexander

I love writer commentaries! I particularly love collaborative ones, where writers discuss the sculpting of a script, the moulding and remoulding to find the shape we now have. Here, they both talk about the truths behind the elements they included and discuss some of the elements they elected to leave out. Fascinating.

The Journey to Valkyrie – 16 mins

As with everything else on this disc, this documentary is more serious-minded and detailed than the usual making-of puff-pieces you can sometimes get on the more lazily-prepared discs. Say what you like about Cruise, no one will ever charge him with being lazy and, appropriately, there’s nothing lazy about this disc.

The documentary points out that Singer has dallied with war films in the past – given the background of Apt Pupil (1998) and the opening moments of X-Men (2000) but they weren’t war films and this isn’t either.

As you would expect, everyone sucks up to Cruise. I don’t know, maybe he genuinely does inspire and deserve this depth of affection and fealty in those he meets in person but for those of us who’ve never fallen under his spell, it still feels vaguely distasteful and deeply suspect.

For example, they do discuss the well-publicised problems that the production had when shooting in Berlin, but don’t even approach addressing the press’ allegations that this was because of Cruise’s religion. Inevitably, there’s no mention at all of the ‘S’ word … but then, the press stories could well be a lie, in which case - why should his religion be a matter of discussion? Well, because something that exists in the popular imagination needs addressing especially if it’s wrong. This isn’t.

All the behind-the-scenes interviews talk of their striving for authenticity – and the effort they went to is genuinely impressive – but, once again, the elephant in the room is the absence of German voices in the film. All that authenticity is completely undermined by the British and American cast.

The Road to Resistance – 9 mins

This guide to the real locations used in the film begins by reiterating the point which is made several times on this disc – that all Germans were not Nazis. They didn’t all join Hitler’s party, they didn’t all believe in his politics.

Point made, we have a brief travelogue, rather like something you might expect to see as a package on a magazine programme, where Stauffenberg’s grand-son gives us a guided tour of some of the real rooms The Conspirators met in, some of which are now museums, some of which the film actually used.

The point this short makes again and again is about how important it was for Berliners that this story be told right. Which brings me back, again and again, to my problem with them using Brits and an A-list American rather than genuine Germans. Surely, if they were so committed to the story, they wouldn’t worry about trying to turn it into summer block-buster and would have made it in German!

The African Front Sequence – 7 mins

This concentrates on the brief battle scenes at the film’s beginning, which I was amused to see were shot in The Mojave Desert (“Which look more like Tunisia than any place on Earth … except maybe Tunisia!”). This is ultimately about explosions, but has its place.

Taking to the Air – 7.30 mins

This short talks about the use of real vintage aeroplanes in the film’s opening moments, rather than the expected CGI planes added afterwards. Blah-blah-authenticity. Thing is … CGI is inevitably cheaper, so why did they go to all the time and trouble? Well, when you see trained-pilot Cruise actually landing one of the vintage Junkers and then walking around with a grin a mile wide, it all becomes clear … they were toys for Tom to play with. Bless.

Recreating Berlin – 7 mins

Part of the reason this film comes across as quite so cold and stark is because of the architecture and locations … which are, as often as not, genuine. The very walls around the actors exude the chilly reality of the period.

The film-makers admit that shooting in Berlin (rather than further East in the tax-advantageous ex-Soviet countries) cost more … but we already know why they made their decision.

Singer talks about how determined he was for his film to not look black and white but be vibrant with colour. I just wish he’d told his colour-grading staff that, because the film they produced is a subtle mix of blue, grey and green with the occasional shock of a red flag. Brrr.

The Valkyrie Legacy – 115 mins

The disc’s real surprise is this almost-two-hour film by prodigious making-of documentarian, Kevin Burns, which is hardly referred to on the packaging but is, in some ways, better argued than the case made in the main film itself.

Being an American documentary, it does feel the need to have music playing perpetually in the background because American documentarians seem to think that their viewers are incapable understanding verbal communication without a piece of music underscoring it to tell them how to feel about it.

Never-the-less, the film maintains a dispassionate tone and concentrates on the facts of the period, explaining the wider perspective of how Hitler came to power and why some of his own citizens might want him dead. Thankfully, it uses subtitles rather than dubbing the interviewees (another technique American documentaries are, unfortunately, likely to employ) and is altogether far more grown-up than the documentary channels of satellite TV have taught me to expect American documentaries to be.

This feature-length extra is better than the main feature and is the most compelling reason to buy this feature-packed disc.
92nd Street Y: Reel Pieces.

This is an on-stage interview between the 92nd Street Y Cultural Centre’s Annette Insdorf and Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer. Although Dr. Insdorf is clearly in the thrall of Cruise and directs the lamest of questions at him, as often as not Singer answers them.

As with everything else on this disc, the discussion does strive to be serous, with references to Truffaut establishing a certain level of cred.

In the interview, Singer makes the point that it was important to the real Conspirators – because they believed it would be important to Germany - that Hitler be brought to book by Germans. Well, surely, if that was the case, if they are truly honouring the memory of those conspirators … they’d have allowed Germans to be in their film.

Alright, point made. I’ll get off me soap-box now.
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And, if you really need everything spoon-fed to you, I give this a Cellulord Rating of: Film: CC Disc: CCCC

Dir: Bryan Singer.
Stars: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson.
Dur: 121 mins

Cert: 12A