Have yourself a very Nazi Christmas!!

What is it with December and the Third Reich anyway?

This month we get three movies that take place during World War Two.

“The Boy in the Stripped Pajamas”, “The Reader” and now “Valkyrie”!!

It’s not that I don’t automatically think of Hitler at this time of year, but WTF?!!

If I get a pair of jack boots and a monocle from Santa I’m going to be pissed.

Anyway, as long as we’re on the topic of overbearing and controlling despots, I guess we should mention that the film stars Tom Cruise and depicts the July 20, 1944 plot of German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

So, not to give anything away (in case you’re not a history buff) but the plot didn’t work.

Imagine if Tom had succeeded? Germany would now be a wonderful place run by aliens and we’d all have our own flying saucers!!

Oh wait, Scientology didn’t exist back then.

Uh… nevermind.

Well, anyway, the point isn’t about how the movie ends but rather how freaking terrible the technology was back in the 40’s when it came to bomb making.

Seriously, you crush a metal tube and then “guestimate” as to how long you’ve got before this thing blows up?

It’s like putting Window’s Vista on your computer.

The film opens with a guy planting a bomb that doesn’t go off, and so they automatically try killing him with the same faulty equipment?!

The explosives guy must have had a government contract that forced everyone to use their crap.

This is why it’s important to use non-union assassins.

Call me crazy but it looked to me like it would’ve been fairly simple to hide a gun in your boot and shoot the guy with the tiny moustache!

Sure you say, but Tom Cruise wants to get away without being killed.

Ah, yes, the clean getaway.

It’s a very important point, but not very well thought out.

Pretend for a second that you’re a German guard at The Wolf’s Den and you hear an explosion coming Hitler’s general location.

Alarms are going off, smoke is billowing up from the smoldering bunker, and all of a sudden a car is rushing away from the carnage at a high speed.

Hmmmm… could this perhaps be a suspect?

Clearly the company supplying the bomb making equipment also hired the security detail because Tom sneaks by with the old “finger on the phone clicker, fake phone call trick.”

The kids today can’t relate to moving parts on a phone so let’s just say he sent an instant message to himself.

That’s the best idea you could come up with?!

You couldn’t even mill around the debris looking concerned for a few minutes?

You know, nudge the guard and say something like “Whoa, it’s a good thing I ducked out to drop a schnitzel in the outen hausen or that would’ve been me in there!!”

Tom has all of the subtly of a white Bronco speeding down the highway stuffed with cash after your wife gets her throat slashed (on that note I’m officially suspending any more OJ jokes until he gets out of prison in twenty five years).

Herein lays the problem with the movie.

It sort of kills the suspense when you know the outcome.

It’s like watching a Scooby Doo cartoon, except that Tom is the guy in the monster costume.

He would’ve gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids (which in this case is the SS Storm Troopers that round everyone up and gut them like fish).

So since we know the end, the only real point in watching the film is for the acting which (not counting the leader of Scientology) I thought was pretty good.

The movie has to shift it’s focus from “Will the plot succeed?” to “Who will survive?” and strangely enough I was drawn into the story.

I’ll give this movie a solid 3 out of 5 German sausages.

Now, please… give the Nazi thing a rest ok?

Und der flying saucers vill take over der World, ya!!