I really, really liked this. An honest portrayal, not at all glossy or “Hollywood”, of an ambitious plan to shorten the Second World War by terminating Hitler and some of his closest allies at The Wolf’s Lair on 20th July 1944.

Daz
I note some daft comments about the film on ‘Historic’, it’s not hard to do your homework on the net is it.
Aside from that, having been swamped with Cruise etc interviews about the film on the media last week, what is your honest judgement on his performance in the role as Staufenberg.
Quite frankly, the first time I saw a trailer for the film, of which I had no knowledge of it being made, I turned round to my missus and said Cruise as Staufenberg, no way, blank look in reply.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the bloke, it’s the same old story though, you get bombarded with bad press about him and his abilities, as soon as the news of the Dam Busters remake was apon us, the first comments were Yeh, I bet we’ll have Tom Cruise thrust apon us as Gibson, tee hee.
Trying to get anybody to go and see the film with me is a nightmare, I ain’t going to the local multiplex on my own, it may have to be the comfort of home to watch it in the end.
It’s a dilema isn’t it, I thought that ‘Downfall’ a German made film with German actors, along with ‘Das Boot’ were fantastic, but it ain’t Hollywood is it, I doubt whether either film made much money for the backers and thats obviously what counts, fair enough.

The Daily Depress must be short of news, ‘The Great Bearded One’ made a statement about this years ago, hadn’t they noticed that he hasn’t been on the telly for ten years.
I tried to contact DB a few years ago over a local conservation issue and there were all sorts of comments about this on the net, I seem to recall that he even did a big article about it for either the Guardian or the Observer, perhaps the use of English in that article was too complicated for the Express editor to understand and it’s taken them all this time to work it out, maybe tomorrow they’ll be telling us that Queen Victoria is dead.

While watching an episode of Channel 5’s excellent documentary ‘Warzone’ last night we were constantly harrased by adverts for this forthcoming film, this has been going on few a few weeks now, which has led to me ranting and raving about the typical Hollywood crassness of casting Tom Cruise as Von Stauffenberg, obviously in order to put backsides on seats in the USA, however…….
I went on to IMDB to find out more and watching the trailers, various interviews and reading the user comments made me sit up a bit.
Firstly the aircraft. I gather the film starts off with Stauffenberg getting wounded while serving with the Africa Corps. This scene was shot in the Mojave Desert, California and from what I read, it was intended to use CGI aircraft but they found it cheaper to use the real thing, a couple of P-40’s, from Chino no doubt. The producer states that Stauffenberg was actually shot up by RAF Spitfires, is this true, who knows, the P-40’s look the business anyway and are more likely to have been the type of aircraft used, or perhaps Hurricanes, but who cares, it looks pretty good.
The two Bf-109’s, apparently Hitlers Tante Ju escorts, are not Buchons with merlins, they have DB engines, there are still photo’s of them in the hangar, they look superb, fish around and you can find footage of them close escorting two Ju52’s.
The Junkers 52’s appear to have been CGI developed in order to show vast numbers of them, I reckon though that there are at least two or maybe three actual fliers, Hitlers personal aircraft is marked up as D-2600, it’s in silver finish and could well be our familiar Lufthanse pal, any one know.
I gather that special permission was obtained to fly these aircraft over Germany with swastikas on their tails, not entirely appreciated by the German PC brigade though.
The cast of the film looks superb, Branagh, Nighy, Wilkinson et al, what is interesting is the casting of Cruise. Apparently the Germans objected to it on the grounds that he is a Scientologist, considered to be a cult in Germany, this caused them to initially refuse any filming to be done over there, but presumably the alternatives of filming in Eastern Europe and the subsequent loss of revenue caused them to change their minds.
The family of Stauffenberg have also objected on the grounds that Cruise wasn’t noble enough in bearing to represent their honourable ancestor, may be so, but apart from stature, their profiles do bear an uncanny likeness.
The American distributors are worried too, films on European history with a Euro cast to match ain’t the US publics cup of tea, fair enough, but it did take £73m dollars in the first week and all the US based user comments I’ve read are generally more than positive about the film.
Personally, I don’t dislike Cruise in the genre to which he is suited, we’ll have to see for ourselves what he’s like in this film, after all lets not forget that one of the roles of a Nazi general is played by a British, transvestite, stand up comedian, now who would have thought that that our Eddie was suited to that.
It looks good, lets give it a chance.
By the way, to answer a previous comment, I gather that everyone talks their own way without resulting to guttural ‘German Speak’, is that a problem, would Hollywood finance a film on this scale with German actors, unlikely, it’s the way of things I’m afraid, but lets not complain about the film until we’ve seen it.

That enlarged picture of the cruiser makes all the difference, you can clearly see the raked funnell tops, making it definately a Tiger Class.
HMS Tiger was dispatched to Brunei in 1962 as a show of naval force against the Indonesian insurgents, there’s a photo on the Tiger Association web site of it unloading stores at Brunei in December 1962.
It’s most likely that it’s Tiger, which, incidentally was being held in reserve in Portsmouth during the Falklands War, there was talk at the time of it being re-comissioned if things got really tough and more ships were lost in the South Atlantic, mainly because of it’s 6” guns and large helicopter hangar, which had been installed in the late 60’s.

For some interesting information and photographs of the skirmishes in the Far East in that period, particularly with regard to aircraft used, try the site http://www.britains-smallwars.com/Borneo/index.html

Fair enough – any other suggestions?

There weren’t many cruisers about even then, not a Lion Class as they had raked funnel tops, with that funnel arrangement it looks like a Fiji Class but Gambia was in reserve then, it could have been Mauruitius but I don’t know where it was serving in 63, probably in reserve too. I need to find my Ian Allen Warships book for that period.

Found it, Mauritius was in reserve then, it could have been RIN Mysore, ex-HMS Nigeria, HMS Sheffield, Belfasts sister ship was the wrong shape for it to be that.

According to a previous posting, 4 Daks were used:-
N147DC
N47FK
G-DAKK
G-AMRA
I’ve just looked at the take off scene filmed at North Weald and it looks like at least 5 were used, but such is the use of CGI, it’s hard to tell, it’s pretty seamless.
Then in the credits there’s an overflight of a couple of P-51’s at North Weald or Upottery as its supposed to be, whether these were the real deal and flown in from DX or CGI again, you can’t tell, knowing Spielbergs enthusiasm, he would probably prefer the real thing if they were locally available.
Later in the film, set in Holland, theres an overflight of Mossies? I can’t remember exactly without finding the scene, but they were obviously CGI. Then during the Bastogne Forest interlude, I seem to remember P-47’s coming over, whether the then TFC P-47 was used and computer replicated I wouldn’t know.
Over to the experts.