After watching Valkyrie the other night, I believe I officially met my quota for WWII movies watched in the past several months. I've experienced the trials of being a black man in the American Army (Miracle and St. Anna); I've looked through the eyes of a German child living near a concentration camp (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas); I've shared the struggle of a German teen coming to terms with the actions of the generation before him (The Reader); and now, I've meet a group of German military officers who dared to deny their oath to their own leader by plotting to assassinate Hitler. While all come from different perspectives, each film harbors the idea that the lines we draw to separate friend from foe are not as solid as we may think, not all the guilty are as evil as we may assume, and not all the innocent are as pure as we may wish. And as the story of Valkyrie unfolds, it tells us all that even in Nazi Germany's own military and government, not all of its men were like Hitler; in fact, many of them were fighting against him with just as much determination as his actual enemies.

Based on the last assassination attempt made on Hitler's life, Valkyrie begins in the battlefields of Africa just before Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) is injured by enemy fire and left short two fingers, half his right arm, and one eye. Writing in a diary just before the attack, he tells us (in the only German and with the only German accent Cruise musters up the entire movie) that he no longer considers it his duty to serve his county, but to save lives. If that means disobeying orders and thwarting the chain of command, so be it. If it means defying or even disabling the highest order in the land, he's the man for the job. "Hitler's not only an enemy to the world," declares Stauffenberg. "He is an enemy to Germany."

Far from just a lone radical, however, Stauffenberg is not alone in that sentiment. While he lies in the hospital recovering, two high ranking officers in Hitler's ranks make an attempt on Hitler's life. Even when the attempt fails, their determination to bring down the man they can no longer allow to represent their country remains unbroken. They know they must do something more. They know they must act now. And so, they call upon Stauffenberg.

From there on, the film becomes an almost Oceans 11-esque caper film set amidst wartime. With the stakes higher than ever, plans are made to not just kill Hitler, but to ensure that actions following his death put power into hands that will quickly guide the war to an end and the world to peace. With each new stage of planning and execution, additional allies are brought in and enemies identified, emphasizing both the depth and reach of resistance within the German military and government as well as the extreme risk which every member of the resistance is taking by refuting their oaths. And despite the fact that we all know the assassination will not succeed, as the plot unfolds with more focus on the players at its center than the man in its bulls-eye, the grip of the film's suspense becomes less about its final outcome and more about how the men and women involved in its execution will either rise to the task or cower in its shadows.

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