Wounded in Africa during World War II, Nazi Col. Claus von Stauffenberg returns to his native Germany and joins the Resistance in a daring plan to create a shadow government and assassinate Adolf Hitler. When events unfold so that he becomes a central player, he finds himself tasked with both leading the coup and personally killing the Führer.
Production
Meticulous period detail—Singer shot in actual Bendlerblock execution site.
Acting
Bill Nighy trembling through every scene, pure anxious magnificence.
Direction
Singer wrings unbearable tension from a foregone conclusion.
Director
Bryan Singer
Tom Cruise
Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg
Kenneth Branagh
Henning von Tresckow
Bill Nighy
Friedrich Olbricht
Terence Stamp
Ludwig Beck
Tom Wilkinson
Friedrich Fromm
Carice van Houten
Nina Schenk Gräfin von Stauffenberg
Kenneth Cranham
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel
Thomas Kretschmann
Otto Ernst Remer
Eddie Izzard
Erich Fellgiebel
Kevin McNally
Carl-Friedrich Goerdeler
David Bamber
Adolf Hitler
Tom Hollander
Colonel Heinz Brandt
David Schofield
Erwin von Witzleben
Christian Berkel
Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim
Jamie Parker
Werner von Haeften
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The real Stauffenberg's children never knew their father tried to kill Hitler; they learned it from a school textbook. Tom Cruise met with surviving family members to secure their blessing.
This was the first major Hollywood production to portray the 20 July Plot from a German resistance perspective, released during a fraught moment of German-American relations over the Iraq War.
US
