The Usual Suspects

Bryan Singer, 1995 (9.1*)
Told in flashback form in this brilliant Oscar®-winning script by Christopher McQuarrie, this is a crime story like none other. A witness, Oscar®-winner Kevin Spacey, is a lone survivor to a gang massacre at a dockside ship, and he tells a harrowing tale to police detective Chazz Palmentieri.

The story begins with a lineup which gathers together five career criminals, aka 'the usual suspects', which allows them to plot a major heist together, and it is this story we learn in the tale told by Spacey. The excellent cast makes this story a gripping mystery - Kevin Pollack, Gabriel Byrne, Benecio del Toro, Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin play the criminals, with Palmentieri and Dan Hedaya the detectives.

This is a creative and unique story that you won't easily forget, with twists you can't see coming, and this film is now permanently entrenched in the crime hall of fame. Now #25 on the IMDB top 250, rated by viewers.

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Valkyrie

Bryan Singer, 2008 (8.7*)
Even if you know this story from history or reading William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, director Singer and screenplay authors Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander have made an excellent suspense film with a tightly woven story of an attempt to assassinate Hitler just after the D-Day invasion, July of 1944. You find yourself actually wondering what the outcome will be, as if suddenly plunged into an alternate history story.

The film begins with chief plotter Col. Claus von Stauffenberg (Tom Cruise) in North Africa, receiving battle injuries that would relegate him to a bureaucratic role for the remainder of the war. Along with many other Germans who could see Hitler destroying both Germany and all of Europe, they felt they owed it to humanity to forge a truce with the Allies immediately, especially before they reached Berlin. These included men within the German army and the government, who began to covertly plot together, and it was no small conspiracy. Von Stauffenberg is brought into the group by superiors.

The cast is excellent overall, especially Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbricht; other recognizable talents include Kenneth Branagh and Tom Wilkinson. Cruise is good enough, though a German actor may have been a better choice, he's just a little too American, better suited for Born on the Fourth of July, still his best role to date, receiving a best actor nomination.

Overall, an excellent suspense film, well-made, very authentic looking with just enough mix of plot development and action, while remaining pretty accurate to history. Singer is better at this type of film, like his The Usual Suspects, than the action films he's recently tackled; he's in his element again here.

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