The REAL Quantum Mania.

Christopher Nolan’s OPPENHEIMER follows the “father of the atomic bomb,” J. Robert Oppenheimer, as he gathers geniuses, cockblocks politicians, and bangs mistresses. A breakneck political thriller with loads of intrigue and dramatic flourish, with an award-winning performance by Cillian Murphy (PEAKY BLINDERS) as the titular physicist, who delved into the quantum realm and actually conquered it. (It’s a pity that in this era, kids equate ‘quantum realm’ with the stupid ANT MAN franchise – look here, hillbillies! Here is the man who made leaps and bounds into the theoretical physics of the smaller-than-microscopic world where splitting an atom would unleash the catastrophic energy held within its quantum embrace.)

Matt Damon is General Leslie Groves, whose mission was specifically to develop an atomic bomb (after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, dragging America into WWII); in October 1942, he would appoint Oppenheimer as director of the top-secret Los Alamos facility in the New Mexico desert, code-named The Manhattan Project (because the initial research was done at Columbia University in Manhattan, New York). David Krumholtz is Oppie’s American scientist friend Isidor Rabi, whose excitement at impending success is tempered by the ramifications of their creation: “I don’t wish the culmination of physics to be a weapon of mass destruction.”

After a July 1945 test detonation in New Mexico, code-named “Trinity” (the world’s first nuclear explosion!), an atomic bomb is deployed on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945 – and then again on Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945 – that effectively ended the Japanese continuing the war after Germany’s surrender in May 1945.

Then, in a paranoiac frenzy, the American government came after Oppenheimer…

If ever there was a movie that needed title cards introducing its players…

I worship the metaphysical charred ground these titans of physics walk upon, yet I couldn’t latch onto any characters due to the pace of the film. I love the fact that Nolan doesn’t treat his viewers like idiots (avoiding explanations of physics; introducing characters with a minimum of dialogue; not titling the non-chronological timeline), but all these men whose brainpower literally shaped the Earth physically and geopolitically, should be publicized and thrown aloft on the pedestals they deserve to be on.

More blowing up reputations, less blowing up test sites, please.

There are scores of key figures in physics here, including: creator of the atom model, Neils Bohr (Kenneth Branagh); architect of the nuclear age, Enrico Fermi (Danny DeFerrari); father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller (Benny Safdie); creator of the Uncertainty Principle and the best damn meth in New Mexico, Werner Heisenberg (Matthias Schweighöfer); my favorite rebel theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid – Hughie from THE BOYS; I didn’t even know who he was portraying until I saw him at a party banging bongos – Feynman’s trademark!); and of course, the man synonymous with science and physics and genius itself, Albert Einstein (Tom Conti, in a beautiful, empathetic performance)…

Failing keeping track of the physicists, to keep our interest, there’s the Hollywood Sex – that’s where the girl is on top, cowboy style. As one of Oppie’s mistresses, it’s commendable that Florence Pugh doesn’t wear a bra during sex scenes (and she is quite game to perform nude surrounded by a table full of clothed men, in one of Oppie’s guilt-ridden fever dreams), but her whining about Oppie being too busy to spend time with her is way missing the mark on why this movie should exist.

More atomic reactions, less jilted women reactions, please.

Matter of fact, Oppenheimer’s famous quote from the Bhagavad Gita – “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds” – is narrated during a sex scene. How’s that for irony? (Irony because sex is an act of life – I gotta remind all the MeToo’s and anti-choicers and safe-sexers – not a sentence of death.)

Emily Blunt is Oppie’s wife, Kitty, with a kid who is always crying. So is she. Any wonder he’s away from home doing math so much? She urges him to fight the government instead of taking their accusations lying down, but is unaware of the corner Oppie is backed into. Nonetheless, she is portrayed as tough as a woman can be (in those sexist times when women scientists were kept far from nuclear projects because the radiation would affect their wombs!), as she puts up with Oppie’s mistresses, maybe because she knew that his one true mistress was physics, an insatiable curse that none of those warm bodies could fulfill, not even hers.

Jason Clarke is the Special Counsel at Oppenheimer’s security hearing, determined to label him a communist. Josh Hartnett is physicist Ernest Lawrence, who would refuse to testify against his friend Oppie. Rami Malek is physicist David Hill, who would be Oppie’s savior in the hearing. (Do yourself a favor and look up all these names and their Promethean contributions to the technological civilization we now take for granted.)

The Trinity Test is the most distinctive segment of the movie, detailed with all the wonder and anxiety leading up to it, accompanied by Ludwig Göransson’s (CREED) heart-palpitating soundtrack: wondering if the atomic chain reaction will trigger the Earth’s whole atmosphere into burning? (The chances were not exactly zero.) With everyone unsure of exactly how extreme the blast and shockwave and radiation fallout area would be, we see them donning welder’s goggles, laying face-down on the ground, in bunkers – I’m not sure how many miles away the blast was, but it seems unnecessarily callous how most of them stayed in the open. When the blinding-white explosion happens, there is silence. And then the shockwave hits. And then the radiation strobes into those delicate wombs. And Dumbo Donald republiKKKans are born…

After Trinity, Oppenheimer is hesitant about bombing Japan (i.e., humans), but he hardly has a say anymore. He would rail against further research into the hydrogen bomb, tormented by the paradox of his own making: in trying to stop global annihilation, he himself had created the means.

Movie does not make clear that TWO types of bombs were created at Los Alamos – Little Boy (uranium fission, Hiroshima), and Fat Man (plutonium implosion, Nagasaki).

Movie titles opened with the legend of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to bring to Man, and how he was tortured for eternity for that deed. So too would Oppenheimer be spiritually tortured for the rest of his life, the reality of the bomb haunting him: hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered and wounded horrifically, skin burning, charred bodies, radiation sickness, Godzilla appearing, etc.

Dr. Serizawa: He’ll kill your allegory.

The original 1954 GOJIRA movie was a scathing retort against the American bombing of Hiroshima. In the movie, Dr. Serizawa laments the WMD he has created to annihilate Gojira, and echoes the sentiment of the atomic bomb’s creator: “If the [WMD] is used even once, the politicians of the world won’t stand idly by. They’ll inevitably turn it into a weapon – A-bombs against A-bombs, H-bombs against H-bombs … adding another terrifying weapon to mankind’s arsenal is something I can’t allow.”

… and then the physical torturing would begin…

From the book by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Vintage Books, 2006), Christopher Nolan has crafted a drama in the style of a thriller where there’s an actual villain we can pinpoint — in the form of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC); with some training in physics, he advocated for the next step – the hydrogen bomb – even as Oppenheimer remorsefully vetoed the idea. Oppenheimer would make a fool of Strauss at a public hearing (making the aspiring physicist seem like an errant child ignorant of the Promethean physics forces Oppie was wielding), which would forever eat at Strauss, leading him to betrayal, requesting Hoover’s FBI investigate Oppie for Communist affiliations, which would ultimately get Oppie’s government security clearance revoked.

Robert Downey Jr.: Not going Full Strauss.

Downey has said that he “forgot how to act” in playing Iron Man over the last 14 years, Tony Stark’s personality being so close to his own that he didn’t need to invest much energy in the character; adding he was happy for this role completely removed from Marvel sorcery. Although he has gone deep here, I can’t honestly say he “disappeared” into the role (like a Day-Lewis or an Oldman) – we can still see traces of Stark. (Speaking of Gary Oldman, he is here as President Truman, but you might not even recognize him because – Gary Oldman!)

More physics, less Iron Man please…

This movie’s climax might make it seem like Strauss was the nemesis behind all Oppenheimer’s government tribulations (almost like SPECTRE retconned Christoph Waltz’s Blofeld, when he claimed to be the architect behind all Bond’s pain for the past 50 years), but American paranoia was sky-high, especially with its many disenchanted citizens dabbling in communism. There were other factions or insulted colleagues who would contribute to Oppie’s excision from the inner sanctum, most of them using communism to paint a target on him. Anyone who associated with known communists was regarded a “traitor,” and Oppie’s social circles were loaded with dabblers, including his brother Frank (Dylan Arnold).

The atomic bomb: a *real* death star.

I would’ve loved to have heard more about the construction of the bomb itself, that we see in brief shots: What was that steel sphere in the center? Why are those outer panels shaped like that? How did dropping it ignite the chain reaction to split the atom?

Movie closes with Oppenheimer pondering with Einstein, on how their work has wrought what they feared – the ultimate destruction of Earth, by unleashing real quantum mania.

END

When the military was nothing but boy-bands.

Song for the Unsung.

A high-pitched drone of violins imperceptibly morphs into the far-off air-scream of a diving German fighter plane. From the expanse of grey sky, a jot of shrill steel, growing into an engine roar, swelling into machine gun slaughter over a beach where 400,000 Allied soldiers huddle, stranded by circumstance, packed like lemmings, waiting for deliverance on the beach at DUNKIRK.

Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s DUNKIRK follows the civilian-aided evacuation of 400,000 British, French and Belgian troops from the beach at Dunkirk on the north coast of France, during WWII.

But it’s not a war movie. It’s a thriller, almost a horror movie, as an isolated location is established, an unseen enemy attacks, and our protagonists are murdered in the most gruesome manner possible.

Opening scene shows flyers cascading down from the skies onto Allied soldiers patrolling deserted streets. The flyers show a map of Dunkirk, and all around it, on the land and surrounding sea, arrows pointing at Dunkirk’s beach, with the legend, “We Surround You.” Just 28 miles from Britain, across the English Channel, the retreating Allied troops were trapped by Dunkirk’s beach being too shallow for the British fleet to get close enough to pick them up. In a desperate move, Britain requisitioned all manner of private vessels – pleasure craft, weekend fishermen, yachts, lifeboats (about 700 private craft) – to cross the Channel in a bizarre civilian/military rescue. To this day, a unique, monumental deed, which springs the tear-ducts for its poignancy – the best of humanity during the worst of humanity (war). Even the slogan chokes me up: “When 400,000 men couldn’t get home, home came for them.”

Opening title cards sketch the situation, otherwise there is no politics, no history, no character development, no Hitler (and his inexplicable orders to quell the air attack and tank advance which would have decimated the Allies irrecoverably), not even any Germans! There is but ONE GOAL – to get home!

Kenneth Branagh is Commander Bolton, standing atop the Dunkirk pier with his Colonel (James D’Arcy), gazing despondently out to sea, his eyes searching the horizon:

Bolton: “You can almost see it from here.”
Colonel: “What?”
Bolton: “Home.”

And surely, the white cliffs of Dover were just over the curvature of the Earth (OR – for the Flat-Earthers – just out of sight due to distance).

Usual reaction of men to a One Direction concert.

DUNKIRK follows the fate of a young soldier named Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), as he survives an ambush, and ends up on Dunkirk beach, seeing thousands of Allied troops gathering, yet none being evacuated. As we ponder on Fionn’s character name being the slang term for British troops, the violins, like an ice-pick to our temples, turn into Messerschmitts…

Three intriguing title cards appear onscreen:

1: The Mole | One Week

Stretching like an isthmus from the beach at Dunkirk, “The Mole” was a long dock for deep-bottomed ships to get close enough to pick up passengers. Even so, the British ships were too deep. Scenes of men crushed like sardines on this open dock, trying to take cover where there is none, as enemy planes strafe them arbitrarily.

As Tommy wanders the beach, in line to board after thousands of others before him, he comes across another soldier, a Frenchman (Damien Bonnard) burying a dead soldier, taking that man’s belongings and dog tags. Their eyes meet, without animosity, just a resigned comradeship, around the misfortune of death. As Tommy tramps amongst the stretchers of wounded men who are each attended by two soldiers, he spies a stretcher with a wounded man unattended. Suddenly, he sees Frenchie desperately divesting himself of weighted belts, etc. and realizes: they can exploit the stretchered man to immediately get on the next ship! In wordless communication, they do just that! (Another great beauty of this film is the economy of dialogue.)

Meanwhile, Commander Bolton is overseeing the boarding of ships. An air attack on the medical vessel. It starts sinking. Bolton screams, “Push her off! Don’t let her sink in the bay!” The heartless command, to abandon all hope for that ship, while making way for other ships to pick up the living!

2: The Sea | One Day

“Are you ready to make more brownies in your pants, son?”

Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) preps his weekend fishing boat for the Dunkirk rescue with his teen son (Tom Glynn-Carney). School friend Georgie (Barry Keoghan) hops onboard, insisting he can help, against the wishes of Mr. Dawson. Innocently optimistic, Georgie tells Dawson, “I’ve never done anything in my life. Maybe I can be a hero…”

Like many others, Mr. Dawson would cast off for the rescue before British soldiers could get onboard and formally requisition his vessel. It was 28 miles he could handle himself.

In a heartfelt moment in history, we see a fleet of disparate tiny craft plying the waves to pick up their boys… Nolan has admitted there are many liberties taken with DUNKIRK (as there are with ALL historical movies), the one over-arching element being the magnitude of the aid provided by the “Little Boats of Dunkirk.” They are this movie’s subject matter, so they seem like they save the day, but they were a small plug-in to the actual military effort, which was coded “Operation Dynamo”; with their inclusion, the event was informally known as “The Miracle of Dunkirk.” William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960) notes their achievement as considerable (if you count that some of them ferried troops to larger vessels at sea). As one video notes, “their role cannot be understated, but it CAN be overstated.” (7 Times DUNKIRK Got History All Wrong.)

Mr. Dawson rescues a soldier (Cillian Murphy) from the hull of a sinking ship, taking him onboard. And his PTSD. Called “shell shock” in those days, Dawson tries his best to calm the anxiety-ridden soldier when he protests violently upon hearing that Dawson is headed towards Dunkirk. In a scuffle, young Georgie sustains a fatal head wound. The dilemma: does Dawson return home for medical help, or does he serve his country? “We’ve come too far to turn back…”

So much can happen in just 28 miles…

3: The Air | One Hour

“Is it possible for me to be sexier than the Spitfire I’m flying? Yes. Yes, it is.”

Three Supermarine Spitfires, the sexiest of warplanes (Dawson notes as they skim the skies above his boat: “Rolls Royce engines – sweetest plane ever built!”), take to the skies from Britain, in a journey that was so quick they would have enough fuel to arrive at Dunkirk, dogfight, and then fly back to Britain.

Farrier (Tom Hardy) is lead pilot, dubiously eyeing his fuel gauge after a dogfight. It is damaged and stuck on Empty. He has to resort to hurried pencil calculations on how much fuel he might have left – and every time he throttles forward, we see a shot of his hand on the throttle, near the damaged fuel gauge… And in Farrier’s ongoing anxiety, one of Nolan’s brilliant cinematic devices: Every time we see the throttle from that angle, it is visual shorthand for “using up fuel.” (Nolan uses the same cinematic device in INTERSTELLAR to signify various spaceship functions, like the grappling hooks.) Thus, when Farrier’s calculations show he is approaching the point of no return, while flying above a German bomber that is approaching the ragtag group of civilian boats, he looks longingly back at Britain, at his fuel gauge, and then makes a decision to dive at the bomber – and we see that shot of the throttle and gauge! And now it means more than just fuel; it means sacrifice…

It takes us awhile to realize just how brilliant Christopher Nolan is: Cutting between three segments of action that are not taking place at the same time, but converging with each other in DUNKIRK’s final act! Only then will it become apparent what “One Week,” “One Day,” and “One Hour” truly mean. The Mole’s events are taking place over the course of a week before the final act; likewise, Mr. Dawson has set course for Dunkirk one day before the final act, and Farrier has taken to the skies merely one hour before the final act. And even then, we see events from many different perspectives: Farrier’s Lieutenant goes down, and we see it from Farrier’s point of view; later we would see it from the Lieutenant’s point of view, stuck in his sinking plane, as a civilian boat hoves to his rescue; and later still, we would see events from the boat’s point of view – as Mr. Dawson, dealing with the madman onboard and a dying boy, rushes to help the sinking pilot! Likewise, Mr. Dawson sees the approaching German bomber early in the movie, and only in the final act, Farrier, having checked his fuel and pushing that throttle forward, dives his Spitfire out of the sun to handle it… Like MEMENTO, like INCEPTION, Nolan is once again playing three-dimensional chess, while we’re trying to keep up with our Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Speaking of youthful silliness, appearing as a young soldier on the beach at Dunkirk – Harry Styles from the boy band One Direction. If not noticed, he might easily be regarded as just another great middle-foreground actor pulling a somber, subdued performance at The Mole. He’s not whining nasally [I think you mean ‘singing,’ Poffy – Ed. Note] nor gadding about in that heterosexually-challenged manner known as “marketing to preteen girls,” so fades into the fabric of this striking film, as he should, as an ensemble player.

Spitfires make me… moist.

With production values that rival SAVING PRIVATE RYAN’s grit and PEARL HARBOR’s dogfights, DUNKIRK is a visual tour de force! Epic and intimate: from claustrophobic cockpits we see the Earth spin, from tiny boats we see the fearful grandeur of gargantuan man-made objects of war – a bomber breaking through clouds and tilting towards us, a warship sailing alongside us with iron sides as high as a building, a medical frigate slowly dragging her cargo of lives and pharmacopoeia under the waves…

Synapses firing our animal survival instincts, with Hans Zimmer’s Shepard-Risset glissandos twisting centipedes into our brains, DUNKIRK more succinctly purveys the blinkered perception of men in war than any war film ever made. Taking a different approach than all those war movies that try to portray all the politics and strategies and personalities behind the battles, we are as in the dark as our protagonists; each singular soul in these three vignettes (Tommy, Mr. Dawson and Farrier) is isolated and unaware – or not displaying the knowledge of – the macro war effort, they each only know what their next step must be, towards the ultimate goal – bringing the boys back home. The impact of this simplicity hits us like a bomber breaking through clouds…

When the orchestra swell eventually comes, we realize how our cheeks have been clenching the edge of our seats like gymnasts…

We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.
— Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940

It was a retreat.

And British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had to rally Britain after this seeming ignominious capitulation. It almost feels as if Nolan inserts Churchill’s “fight them on the beaches” speech as dramatic license (as narration under a final montage of soldiers returning home) but Operation Dynamo is, in fact, the actual event that spurred that slurry speech on June 4, 1940. In that jowly manner that has gotten more pronounced as imitators do him no justice.

As the Dunkirk troops return in myriad transports into the British towns, they believe they will be scorned as fleeing cowards, but the combination of the military-civilian rescue, Churchill’s speech and the Movie Orchestra Swell ensures they are touted as returning heroes. A country united by jowls.

Of the 400,000 troops stranded at Dunkirk, the British High Command hoped to evacuate 45,000. They got 360,000.

The ragged fleet of civilian boats did not all arrive at once at Dunkirk – as they do in the movie – although it does make for another tearful moment when Bolton sees them through his binoculars.

Colonel asks: “What do you see?”
Bolton: “Home.” And dramatic license.

And Churchill said, “We shall go in One Direction – home!” That word “home” still chokes me up though–wait – what?!–

END

And behold, Jesus mud-wrestled the creature amidst the uterine juices of damnation.
And lo, it was icky.

Frankenstein’s Mobster.

MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has the reputation for following its infamous source material closely – Mary Shelley’s groundbreaking 1818 novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. The fact that it follows the book only barely, and the fact that people yet put on airs when lauding the movie as authentic shows how much people actually read.

Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in this fevered, overwrought encomium to mad scientists and the monsters they create. Young scientist Victor Frankenstein (Branagh), inspired by boundary-pushing life-preservation experiments in 19^th century Geneva, contrives a method to create the spark of life in dead flesh. After experimenting with animals, bringing them back from death, Frankenstein constructs a man from body parts scavenged in science labs and graveyards – and reanimates him. Then, like every good Reality TV parent, Frankenstein abandons the creature. The reanimated man (played by Robert De Niro, in what looks like extremely painful makeup) is shunned by his creator, and embarks on a killing spree as a cry for help. At least, that’s what the creature says…

Frankenstein keeps the “monster” a secret from his betrothed Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and best friend Clerval (Tom Hulce). (I feel so sorry for Hulce in this role. At the time, he was cultivating a reputation of accepting only noteworthy acting gigs, which were rare. After his magnificent turn as a titan himself in 1984’s AMADEUS, this period piece, with its caliber of talent and majestic intent, seemed like a natural progression for him. Alas, his talents are muted by the material and the lackluster filmmaking.) Ian Holm is dad, on his gigantic English estate; Richard Briers is the old blind man with whom the monster finds a moment’s respite, and John Cleese makes an excellent serious cameo as an outlaw professor.

Historical Fact: early dildos just looked like monkey paws.

An element of the film that fakes us into believing it is loyal to the novel is the opening sequence featuring Aidan Quinn as Captain Walton, helming a foundering ship through arctic ice and coming upon Frankenstein pursuing his creature. The whole tale is then told in flashback by Frankenstein. This device is also used to frame the novel, but the novel goes deeper, telling it from the point of view of Walton relating Frankenstein’s tale, who, in turn, devotes a large chunk of dialogue to relating his creature’s tale, so the book seems like three flashbacks in one.

Another significant inclusion from the book: THE CREATURE SPEAKS! We have been so inundated with the avalanche of Frankenstein media (starting with the original 1931 film FRANKENSTEIN, starring Boris Karloff as the Monster) that portrays the creature as a big dumb galoot that we forget the creature was endued with a functioning brain and was quite articulate. (We can’t help thinking of Marty Feldman in Mel Brooks’s YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, choosing a brain for the creature, marked “Abby Normal”…)

Of all the deviations from the book, there are two that benefit the film; first, John Cleese’s brain in the creature (Cleese is Professor Waldman, killed by a fanatic, whose head is cut into by Frankenstein for his intellect); second, instead of reanimating a nameless grab of body parts at the creature’s insistence of a female mate, Frankenstein reanimates his own lover – the murdered Elizabeth!

The Cleese-brain plot point is wasted, as the creature is struck on the head by a falling beam when birthed, effectively negating all those potentially interesting avenues involving a professor’s brain driving the leviathan. However, the reanimated-Elizabeth plotline is undoubtedly ominous and actually “scary.” In a weeping fervor, Frankenstein lops off the head of his original female (in this story, she is a relative of Frankenstein’s that the creature murdered; in the novel, a clutch of body-parts) and stitches on dead Elizabeth’s head (obviously following the handbook on Medical Procedures Made Simple.) When she comes to, Bonham Carter gives a disturbing performance as someone slowly discovering they are reanimated.

As Superman was the first true cinematic superhero, Frankenstein created the first cinematic Monster. In this telling, we sidle up pretty close to Shelley’s original vision of the creature itself – an intelligent being shunned and lonely, seeking revenge for the forced life thrust upon it – but even one of the world’s greatest actors cannot make us feel any compassion toward this poorly fleshed-out, tragic beast.

I truly think the problem lies in Shelley’s original work, for her Victor Frankenstein is a confused character whose emotions turn on a dime when it comes to desire to create a living being and then revulsion once that being is created. And so Branagh tries to portray that fickleness in the movie, but this is not a natural human reaction, so it misses the dramatic mark: When his new man-creature is birthed (in a scene that dwells too long on both Branagh and a naked De Niro entwined like female wrestlers in sensual amniotic slime), the creature is inadvertently chained and knocked unconscious. What does Franky do? Leave the creature hanging there and starts contemplating his navel. Are you a scientist, man?! Start doing tests, examining the creature’s metabolism, heart rate, skin regeneration, reflexes, etc.! What’s with all this philosophical mooning?

“We shall ride so hard that I will explode in my pantaloons from your mannequin buttocks rubbing urgently against me.”

Shelley creates a great allusion in the subtitle of her book, The Modern Prometheus, but chooses to go the route of simple-minded murder than the more interesting plot of society being exposed to this scientific wonder. As Prometheus stole forbidden knowledge of the gods and bequeathed it to Man, Victor Frankenstein treads that crucible, so we can excuse a modicum of self-examination and fear, but cannot we also revel in the unbounded excellence of the experiment’s success?

We must recall Mary Shelley was 18 when she penned this tale. Though her writing style is grandiose and exhibits a vocabulary which puts modern 18-year-olds to shame, her knowledge of scientific practices and story devices like characterization and motivation was virtually nil. She did a great job capturing the essence of a disturbing idea that probes at a primal fear of mankind – which is why the tale is so universally embraced – however she blithely set forth her characters’ actions, sprinkled liberally with flowery language, and hoped to disguise the fact there was hardly any substance behind their deeds.

The creature is also quite shallow, birthed with the intellect of an infant, soon turning to murder for no reason other than to jealously bait his creator. (And why do we perfunctorily call the creature a “monster” anyway? The “monster” epithet could probably be applied after he starts killing people, but we are conditioned to think of him as that from the outset!) And De Niro doesn’t help, seemingly just reading his lines and waiting for the knockoff bell to take off this goddam makeup. His leaden performance leads us to believe someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Shelley’s novel never mentions the process by which the living person is created, because – she was not a scientist, but every Frankenstein movie has utilized electricity/lightning to reanimate the creature. A creative new device here is – electric eels!

In the final telling, MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN has merits and demerits that cancel each other out. At least it’s sincere in trying to be authentic. But in its adherence to Shelley’s dated, drab approach, it becomes as inauthentic as all the other Frankensteins ever loosed into cinema. What do I mean by this? Well, as an example, the creature never raises his voice; he speaks calmly and articulately, because that was the ethos of the day – intelligent conversation, not Running and Screaming. The “terror” has not been updated to today’s “entertainment” standards.

The filmmakers also fail to convey the true intended horror of Frankenstein’s tale – the forbidden “tampering in God’s domain.” Although there is no religiosity in Shelley’s work, that unholy element was the unspoken heretical dread of creating life from nothing back in the 1800s. It was a trespass unforgivable. No one is getting that message now. Partly because we have become inured to the Frankenstein story over decades, partly because spiritual outrage is a thing of the past, and partly because the acting is so mediocre.

Next: THE GODFATHER PART IV, starring Abby Normal.

END

Bourne Impossible.

If you’ve eye-rattled through the BOURNE movies (I know I have), and if you’ve eye-spied the modern MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies (I know I have), then maybe the time you’ve set aside to eye-glaze through JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT might be better spent polishing your screenplay or your knob (I know I have), as I’m sure you’ve seen all this running-tilting-tickingclock-technology-spyware-malware-hostage-villain-aikido-shooting clusterfuckulation in some form or other…

Chris Pine (eyes the color of skyblue romance) is CIA analyst Jack Ryan, the latest in a long line of Jack Ryans (a character created by author Tom Clancy in 1984, The Hunt For Red October; SHADOW is the first film featuring this character, that is not based on a Clancy novel). This movie once again screws with the Ryan timeline (as did THE SUM OF ALL FEARS) by making Ryan a young man witnessing the Twin Towers’ destruction on 9-11. So whatever happened to the Harrison Ford Cold War years?…

9-11 spurs Ryan to join the Marines in Afghanistan, whereby he is shot down, meets nurse Keira Knightley, who gives good physical therapy with that man-jaw of hers, is recruited by Kevin Costner for the CIA, and goes to work on Wall Street as a cover for his spywork. (I don’t know what somberness gene veteran actors like Eastwood, Willis and Costner possess – as they age, they are able to do less and less onscreen, and yet retain more and more gravitas. I loved Costner’s empathetic performance in MAN OF STEEL; even his beleaguered hitman in the lumpy 3 DAYS TO KILL was enjoyable. Here, Costner walks slowly, speaks softly, does nothing and oozes importance.)

Kenneth Branagh with a peachy Russian accent plays a Russkie who is trying to profit from Wall Street by collapsing it through illegally moving money around. Apparently that’s “bad” – even though American Wall Street CEO Swine have been doing it for decades and not going to jail for it. But that’s not enough drama for the filmmakers, who try to insert as much intense staring at computer screens as they dare for an action spy thriller (the switching of the flash-drives, the downloading of files; the hacking of secure passwords, the progress screens moving too slowly… my heart was in my throat!). So they insert a redundant physical BOMB into the plot as well. (That oughta knuckle all those Luddites who don’t appreciate the excitement of watching a screen flash “Access Denied”…)

The changing face of Jacobim Mugatu Ryan…

So the plot is to blow up Wall Street – financially and physically. And Jack Ryan is there to stop them– [needle scratch] Hang on! Why are you trying to stop them, dude? If Wall Street is physically blown up, you know who will suffer? Wall Street. No one else. You didn’t fall for that crap about Too Big To Fail again, did you? Oh, sorry, it’s not 2008 yet… If Wall Street falls it won’t make any difference to our lives; then again, it might make a little difference – our lives would be BETTER because those slothful gluttonous avaricious pricks on Wall Street won’t be in the picture any more. Rejoice, oh frabjous day!

But wait – at Wall Street’s physical location, there are only computers and files and papers. Surely there are virtual copies of ALL Wall Street’s money crimes somewhere else, or on the cloud, allowing them to continue perpetuating/perpetrating them should the physical buildings actually fall down. That’s only common sense. Maybe Fort Knox has to have physical gold at its location, but Wall Street would have gone virtual as soon as the greedy swine figured a way to keep their money hidden in the Bahamas. I understand that the CIA might be concerned for the people in the buildings (a thin sliver of concern, to be sure), which is why they are trying to stop the bomb – but I’m not buying that concern as part of the plot for a millisecond. Not with the term “collateral damage” a reality – a term that THEY created to describe innocent bystanders.

Branagh also directs, from a script by David Koepp.  Production values are excellent, action is standard, ticking clocks are ubiquitous.

Annoying Nurse Knightley becomes Ryan’s wife – you know the stereotype: she is clueless he’s in the CIA, he lies to her during a phone call that he’s at his desk job while fighting an international assassin in a European bathroom; wackiness ensues when snoopy wife follows him to foreign country, finds his gun in desk, thinks he’s having affair. What fun we’re having rolling out the same old conventions! She gets in on the spy game as Jack’s backup because she whines loud enough. That’s believable.

Some running and jumping and driving stunts later, everyone Russian is dead, everyone American is alive, and everyone watching this movie is asleep.

END

The Chamber of Feebness.

The sequel to HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS, continues the richly-layered story of young wizard Harry Potter and his friends in their second year at Hogwarts, the school for enunciating British kids. A monster awaits in a chamber of secrets and only Harry can defeat it using numerous deus ex machinae.

At his step-parents’ home in London, we catch up with Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) meeting the bastard son of Gollum and Yoda EPISODE II – Dobby (voiced by Toby Jones), a self-flagellating, sado-masochist house elf, who warns him not to go back to Hogwarts. Harry is determined to find a way back though, and Dobby, for some reason, frames Harry with some mischief that, in any sane person’s house, would guarantee Harry would be kicked out of the house and back to boarding school. I’m missing the boat on the motivations of Harry’s step-parents; instead of getting rid of this boy they hate with a vengeance, they exile him to his room. Though how can mere bars on a window stop a magical person from escaping?

Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint) and his ginger bros break Harry out in a flying car– Stop right there – a thousand questions: Is the CAR flying? Or is it their WILL that is making the car fly? Why bother steering? It’s got no ailerons, stabilizers, rudders; does it run on gas?–

The overpopulated Weasley clan is introduced to Harry and they all teleport via green flame to Diegone Alley. Though instructed to speak clearly for the chant, Harry, who up to this point has spoken like an English professor on Branagh Juice, decides to pronounce it “dia-gon-ally” and gets transported diagonally into someone’s arsehole, we presume. No matter, for in this wretched place he meets Hermione (Emma Watson) – and the film at last becomes watchable.

What? Yes, I’ve noticed she’s grown, but I’m not looking there. Glorious. That aquiline nose, those waterfall locks… She repairs his glasses, “Oculis Repairos” (can you make me feel a little dirtier with those dumb spells, please?); you’d think he’d learn that spell himself, being a glasses-wearer. But maybe that’s his way of cultivating her little wizmuff.

The HARRY POTTER movies are well-made films (this sequel also directed by Chris Columbus), exquisite detail lavished on every scene, with excellent acting and production values. Yet I keep losing interest at regular intervals. Reason: magic. The Potterheads scream in my face, “But LORD OF THE RINGS (this series’ most obvious competition) has magic too!” Yes it does, but wields it in a more sensible manner. Every time the POTTER series uses arbitrary magic with no payoff or purpose, I roll my eyes and go, “Expecto Wankforus!” For example: Why are they changing animals into wine goblets? Is there any point to this at all? Any application in the real world? Any reason for it in the wizarding world? Is there any payoff? Harry breaks his arm and it’s immediately fixed by magic. That’s nice. Why write that it broke in the first place if the fix was so easy? And Dobby can make objects float, teleport, shoot fire out of his fingers – I mean, how does such a powerful creature become a slave in the first place?

When something is called “magical” it means it resembles magic (which is irrational, illogical and follows no laws of physics). It’s almost an insult. So you can’t call a HARRY POTTER film “magical” because it’s not like magic – it IS magic. It is irrational, illogical and follows no laws; the world of Harry Potter is unpredictable in the worst of ways. Any scientist will tell you that if the real world was as devoid of physics laws as this series of movies, everything in the Universe would be dead or in a state of chronic chaos.

The main cast all return, with an addition: Kenneth Branagh is new professor Gilderoy Lockhart, comic relief for the sinister Snape (Alan Rickman), and the one shining light in this movie (besides Hermione). In a fantastically cheesy performance, he’s the Defense Against Dark Arts teacher, more involved with his own legend than teaching, five-time winner of the Most Charming Smile award.

We are also introduced to Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s (Tom Felton) dad, as glamorously fey with that long white hair, creating a red herring as the bad guy, but he’s only a bad guy to Dobby, who finger-fries him later anyway. A pointless subplot.

The House of Slytherin (who are regarded as tacit “bad guys” in the school pecking order) built the chamber of secrets, to unleash a horrible monster and purge the school of all who were unworthy to study magic. It’s all very scary until we realize it makes no sense; that the chamber is somewhere under the girl’s bathroom, and that the monster is just a big snake that is easily defeated by Harry because of a magic hat, a magic sword, a magic phoenix and a screenwriter (Steve Kloves) who puts them all together because author J.K. Rowling ran out of ideas.

Look at these two idiots hugging EACH OTHER!

With Weasley’s worried face working overtime, he and Harry drink a potion to turn them into two other guys. It’s FACE/OFF for nerdists! The same potion turns Hermione into a cat! Don’t even ask– but are you trying to make me commit statutory master stroking? She says in horror, “Look at my face!” Weasley (in one of his few smiling moments – or should that be ‘leering’) replies, “Look at your tail!” Oooh, I am, I am. You’re already thinking about it, aren’t you, Ronnie?

As the filmmakers stole Dobby from LOTR, now they steal the spider sequence from the same Peter Jackson series. Hundreds of giant spiders surround Ron and Harry –cough, Shelob!– their magic flying car saves them in the nick of plagiarism. (So the car does have a will of its own – or were one of them mind-controlling it? And if it can think for itself as it rescues them, why bother steering and gearing?… Oh, it’s “flight gear” is jammed, so it can’t fly? A physical lever to control a metaphysical action? You lost me at Making It Up As You Go Along…)

And then – Boredom, thy name is Quidditch. One of the balls chases after Harry. It’s obviously “tampered with,” but does the game stop? No. Draco keeps bashing into Harry maliciously in full view of all spectators. But does the game stop? No. Rules like World Championship Wrestling. When Harry breaks his arm, in a school full of magic professors, they let the comic relief Gilderoy fix it.

Christian Coulson is Tom Riddle, who gives us a Bond exposition to pad the film’s climax, and to give Dumbledore’s phoenix time to fly down into the catacombs and drop off a hat to Harry, in which materializes a magic sword to– ah, forget it!… Then smartypants Riddle mouths off that his spirit is in the magic book lying right next to Harry. Geez, Harry, spirit in book, basilisk tooth in hand; how about stabbing the tooth into the book to stop it from yapping and telling everyone how to stop it?

Phoenix drips tears on Harry’s wound. He heals like Wolverine. Magic. Love it. Anything goes.

Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane) arrives back from Azkaban prison. We never even knew he left. As the school cheers him like the star of the show, we are left wondering whose bitch he was.

END

“Hmm, let’s see; who else can I impress with my delicious blond tresses
and massive upper body strength?

Godliness is next to prettiness.

Director Kenneth Branagh brings THOR to the big screen with all the respect that a Thunder God deserves and all the cut obliques that a woman craves. And having Mr. Branagh at the helm explains the preponderance of British accents.

The Thundercumber

Banished to Earth for his arrogance, the Norse god of bad weather, Thor, must learn humility and sacrifice before he can return to Asgard, the realm of the gods. It’s a simple enough redemption tale, coupled with some fish-out-of-water gags, but what sets this Marvel Studios production apart from lesser superhero tales like CAPTAIN AMERICA or FANTASTIC FOUR is the depth of story and the talent of the actors conveying it.

‘Whaaaat?’ say you, who were pushed back in your seats from the bone-rattling action and eye-dazzling visualization of the realm of the gods; wasn’t this just another bombastic bombast of bombalicious bomba? What set THOR apart from mere mortal movies?

It’s majestic, tragic, epic and colorfully kinetic; and yes, its dazzling action is indisputably modern and geared toward popcorn, but the overarching story of heavenly political intrigue is decidedly Shakespearean (now that Kenneth Branagh connection makes perfect sense): two sons of an aged king want the throne, one to expand the kingdom forcefully, one to betray the kingdom and win it back duplicitously. Both bad reasons, yet pitting each against the other and both against their father. Now I’m not giving the writers any undue credit, all these elements are written into Norse legend and Marvel canon; I’m saying that they brought these elements to the screen very successfully.

Anthony Hopkins is Odin, ruler of Asgard (the only mortal who can realistically play a god – besides Morgan Freeman), all-powerful, all-wise, all-beard, who regretfully banishes his impulsive son Thor for inciting war with the frost giants of Jotunheim.

Blond and body-beautiful Chris Hemsworth is Thor, haughty regal manner and heavenly abs, such a likeable guy, even when he’s being arrogantly medieval. Reminds us of Brad Pitt with bigger biceps. (If THOR were made ten years earlier, with this technology, the role would have gone to Pitt.) We see the unmatched power of Thor as he battles hundreds of frost giants, led by King Laufey (Colm Feore). While his warrior friends ineffectually swordfight like fey minstrels, Thor commands the thunder do his bidding, he cracks the very ground, he flies, he wields the mighty hammer Mjolnir like a spinning turbine, and destroys in one fell stroke a gigantic monster that looks like a Rancor. I especially like the “spots” on Thor’s costume – the filmmakers haven’t scrimped on the design or modernized it, giving him medieval arm gauntlets and a big red cloak to go with his big upper body strength.

When Odin banishes Thor, he also wrests from him Mjolnir, and flings it Earthward with the imprecation that only “he who is worthy of the power of Thor” shall be able to lift it. As a final insult – he pulls off Thor’s spots! Not the spots!

On Earth (known as Midgard to the gods), Thor falls in with three scientists, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman, disgustingly slim and pretty), Erik Selvig (Stellan Skarsgård, who in real life, is actually from the Norse lands where these gods originated!) and Darcy (Kat Dennings, who has that annoying yet adorable girly habit of wearing her sleeves down past her palms). Jane tells Thor of her studies of Einstein-Rosen bridges (wormholes), which explains scientifically the beautifully visualized “rainbow bridge” from Asgard. And Thor tells Jane of his lost hammer, which is really a metaphor for how he’s feeling after being divested of godly powers. It doesn’t matter to Jane; she just wants to play patticake with his unspotted torso.

While Thor is on Earth, treachery is afoot in Asgard, as Thor’s half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston, channeling Data from STAR TREK GENERATIONS) assumes the throne when Odin has a heart attack and goes into a coma. (Really? Gods can have weak hearts? Calling it “the sleep of the gods” doesn’t make it any less General Hospital.) Loki spins lies to keep Thor Earthbound. But it is not as simplistic as villain-versus-goodie-two-shoes, or villain wanting to “rule the world bwohahahaha!”; Loki’s spite stems from discovering he was adopted by Odin and never told about it, feeling betrayed and deceived. Hiddleston plays Loki almost like a cry for help, as he twists plots within plots in Machiavellian intrigue, his quest for power balanced against his need for acceptance. In the final scenes, when Loki incites Thor to fight him, we can see traces of tears in his eyes, like there is still a brotherly bond between them, but he must tragically follow his principles instead of his emotions. Though these final scenes adhere to action movie protocol and are larger-than-special-effects-life, there are yet those excellent nuances of humanity woven in.

Parallel with this godly intrigue, there’s Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), skulking about with his government spooks; a familiar face in these modern Marvel movies, his role expanded here to more than just introducing himself as “the Homeland Security guy from S.H.I.E.L.D.” He isolates the crash-landed Mjolnir and sends ineffective agents to make sexy battle with Thor in the rain, to stop him from retrieving it. (And is that Jeremy Renner we see with a bow and arrow, working for Coulson? I’m guessing he’s Hawkeye.) And after all that hot man-battle, Thor finds he cannot lift his own hammer! (Is this a gay metaphor; is he too exhausted from pounding that long line of men? No, that’s just your dirty homophobic mind. Stop looking at his pecs!) Thor discovers he is not yet worthy to wield Mjolnir. Of course! – the required Hero Story Arc! Why didn’t we see that coming? (Probably cos you were looking at his pecs…)

THOR is filled with subtle details that are given no fanfare, yet set it apart from the average movie: when Thor is told the hammer is “fifty miles west of here” he walks out into the street boldly – and is honked at by cars, making us realize ‘That’s right – he knows no road rules!’ – then he looks up at the sun to gauge direction; a subtle gesture that might go unnoticed, this is how people without watches and compasses gauge time and direction!

Loki sends a fire-breathing robot to Earth to “kill them all” (when it lands in a great THOOM on the desert floor, a SHIELD agent asks, “Is that one of Stark’s?” – a sly, sideways reference to IRON MAN). Only when Thor proves his humility, courage and self-sacrifice against this robot does Mjolnir become his plaything once more. And he gets his spots back!

There are no cackling villains, no overacting, no rubbing-hands-in-glee schemes; everyone is controlled and sedate, as befitting a realm of gods. Especial credit to Colm Feore as Laufey, whose devilish makeup simply screamed rubbing-hands-in-glee, but comported himself like a true killer of gods.

There’s Rene Russo looking old and queenly as Odin’s wife; Idris Elba is Heimdall the Gatekeeper, who manages to be All-Seeing except when danger is imminent; Jaimie Alexander is Sif, the hottest of Thor’s bosom buddies (emphasis on bosom).

Movie ends with a title card promise, “Thor will return in THE AVENGERS” – an ambitious, all-encompassing endeavor by Marvel Studios to bring many superheroes together in one movie. Unlike the superhero universe where heroes band together to fight evils that are greater than any single one of them can handle, we’re entering the corporate universe of copyrights and licensing and avarice – True Evil. I wonder who is overseeing it all. What a task it must be to coordinate all the strands of franchises and directors and canon; it’s hard enough organizing five band guys to get to one studio on time and have all their parts learned; imagine what organizing this Marvel Multiverse must be! For Marvel to pull it off, they have become as powerful as the new gods they have been promulgating over the last fifty years. The minds at Marvel Corp are the new superheroes. And it has nothing to do with their upper body strength.

END

Plight of the Valkyries.

When I heard Tom Cruise was to play a World War II Nazi, I laughed my LMAO off. Tough sell for a non-actor. And by non-actor, I mean movie star. And by movie star, I mean he can’t act.But then it all comes clear. The role was Colonel von Stauffenberg, who was involved in one of the more famous assassination plots against Hitler – so Cruise was not really being asked to extend his acting bone; he was a disenfranchised Nazi, a veritable “liberal” in America’s eyes. He was a traitor to the Germans, but you know what they say: One man’s traitor is another man’s Cruise.

Colonel Cuken von Poffenberg

And, ludicrous as it may sound, Cruise and director Bryan Singer (X-MEN) actually boast of the “risk” for Cruise in taking such a role. What risk? His character is the Hero, with a beautiful wife (Carice van Houten) and four loving, blond kids (cos he’s German, see); he’s principled, a born leader, and hates the Nazis so much he’s practically American. He doesn’t even speak German in the film! Associated Press actually published this stupid article: Tom Cruise taking risk with Nazi film `Valkyrie’.

In VALKYRIE, it is 1944 and Chancellor Adolf Hitler, whom many on both sides regard as an “insane genius,” is not only losing the war that he started, he is committing atrocities and driving Germany’s credibility with the rest of the world straight into the toilet. Kinda like George W. Bush – without the “genius” bit. We meet Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg (Mr. Cruise, proudly pretending he is “taking a risk”) as a young rebel, displeased with Hitler’s management of the war, his mission impossible: “to serve Germany – or the Fuehrer – not both.”

Then the Allies bomb him. Stauffenberg loses his right hand, half his left hand, and his left eye. If that doesn’t make you wanna blow up your Chancellor, well…

Stauffenberg is recruited by a cast of “Chermans,” so upper-crust British they make your butler feel like an illegal Latino: Kenneth Branagh (as Major-General Tresckow), Bill Nighy (as General Olbricht), Tom Wilkinson (as General Fromm), Terence Stamp (as Ludwig Beck), Eddie Izzard (as General Fellgiebel), Kevin McNally (as Dr. Goerdeler). The German names won’t mean a thing unless you know the story – the joke is in the casting. It is why VALKYRIE stumbles conceptually, because it is always in the back of our minds, “No wonder they’re trying to assassinate Hitler – they’re BRITISH!”

Bad Guys are British, right? Staple of Hollywood. So casting them as Germans was no stretch, but director Singer ensures that the “good” Bad Guys (i.e. traitors) are all British actors and the “bad” Bad Guys (i.e. Nazis) are actual German actors.

Then there’s Tom. Fruiting about the authentic-looking WWII backdrop, in no way trying to inhabit the role of a one-handed, eye-patched, high-ranking German Chief of Staff. Just Being Cruise. The American accent is bad enough. (We give the filmmakers credit here for the artful way they suspended our disbelief in everyone speaking English: the opening titles are written in German, and morph into English, then we hear Cruise speaking German with English subtitles, cross-faded into him speaking English.) We get the point of the translation for our lazy Western ears, but there is more to a role than an accent; Cruise gives it nothing more than Cruise. We do not lose ourselves in this “German’s” conflict – committing the highest crimes known to man since Judas Iscariot. It’s Tom Cruise, eat your popcorn.

The two things foremost in my mind were Cruise’s ingenious bluescreen glove he’s obviously wearing, and how hard the Shakespearean vets on set must be laughing at his babyboy acting chops over lunch.

As a political thriller, VALKYRIE succeeds, though. Even with Tom just Being Cruise. Writers Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) and Nathan Alexander compress events and often just falsify events to keep it popcorn-friendly – this is not a historical document – but they do not lose too much in their streamlining because the story itself is just so entertaining. (To understand the extent of the operation, and its many complications that are not shown in VALKYRIE for brevity, one of the most authoritative sources is still William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.)

“Valkyrie” was the code-name for a plan that called for Germany’s Home Army (led by Thomas Kretschmann – he was the Euro boat captain in KONG 2005) to hold major German cities in case of a revolt from the millions of foreign laborers. Stauffenberg says, “I’ve rewritten Valkyrie” (which is ironic, considering the filmmakers re-wrote the events of Hitler’s assassination in VALKYRIE as well) – an idea which comes to Stauffenberg while listening to Wagner’s Flight of the Valkyries (somehow Singer squeezed it in).

The plan: to kill Hitler – with a good old-fashioned time-bomb (with no Roger Ebert Red Digital Readout!) – then report that SS radicals were trying to take over the cities, which would allow the conspirators to mobilize the Home Army to arrest all SS officials. This would nullify Hitler’s main Gestapo bulldog, Himmler.

It is a pleasure to see a modern movie that doesn’t use holo-computers, laser fields, cell phones or cockamamy technology so outlandish it might as well be magic. (I refrain from dropping the classic Arthur C. Clarke aphorism on you. Congratulate me. It’s harder than you think.)

Stauffenberg plants the bomb in a briefcase near Hitler during a staff meeting. It detonates, seemingly killing everyone in the room. The Home Army started its takeover of major cities, but just as Germany was about to become the United States of Tom Cruise – Hitler was discovered alive and made a public radio announcement to proclaim his survival was divine.

The conspirators failed by not controlling the flow of information. This was in a time when mass communications were in the form of telegrams sent to a central communications switchboard, then forwarded on. Though the conspirators had hundreds of high-ranking officers onboard Valkyrie, they failed to recruit the low-ranking message personnel. The telegram of Hitler’s death stunned these indoctrinated Nazis, but the following one about his survival made them smell that rotten something in Denmark (on accounta it’s so close to Germany…)

Just as the conspirators were saying, “I love it when a plan comes together,” the Home Army is re-claimed by the Nazis. As Stauffenberg’s orders go out over the wire to arrest SS officers, orders issue from the Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s HQ) to arrest Stauffenberg. The wire operators chose to send on The Fuehrer’s orders and ignore Stauffenberg’s.

Stauffenberg’s plan had to work, so he made no effort to hide his tracks. He was discovered and executed within the 24-hour period when Valkyrie was launched on 20 July 1944. He was executed 21 July 1944.

Somewhere in Germany, there is a monument to Tom Cruise for his brave sacrifice. Or is it in Britain in the Risky Business Untrained Actor’s museum?…

END