Project Valkyrie

It appears the crew had a lot of fun making this film. The movie starts out in black and white from WWII as Dr. Jack Cranston makes a robot to kill Nazis. Now in the present (2002) his grandson Jim is going through his crates and discovers the robot. Meanwhile neo-Nazis are threatening Chicago.

On the plus side, they spent some time making a decent sound track. On the negative side, the movie didn't have a lot of plot and they had to extend scenes needlessly to fill up time. Some of it worked better than others. It worked for the opening credits- somewhat. A man is walking through the streets of Chicago with swagger music that just fit his swagger. The credits flash in between. He enters a elevator and the music stops (elevators normally have music). You think the movie is going to start. Then as he leaves the elevator the music and credits once again start. I liked the cleverness of that aspect, something you must do in low budget films. However, the cleverness wears thin after that. The lack of acting was offset by the dialouge which had some better than usual lines for a low budget.

The movie contained excessive amounts of fake blood, some of which made no sense such as when Jim's had got hit by a foam baseball bat. It wasn't supposed to be foam, but when you can see the bat bend backwards as he goes through the air, it ain't wood. The lead character played by Steve Foland reminded me of a Paul Giamatti that can't act. The movie is campy, but only goes half way.

F-bomb, no sex or nudity. 4 stars on the campy scale.

Going into Project: Valkyrie you know it's low budget, so you should be willing to forgive a lot in the production values. The acting is non-union locally homegrown talent, so that falls short. Possibly a second re-write would have been wise too, but even then the script does it job of telling a story from Point A to Point B, so it's solid in that respect. At times the Cinematopgraphy is very well planned, but more than not the camera get placed in a bad location at that derails those few attempts at good coverage.

The amazing thing here is the use of the Robot character. Through hand gestures and body language alone, the Robot communicates with his fellow characters in the movie and the audience is allowed to connect with the Robot and his plight to save humanity from the Evil Nazi Demons.

IF you are an indie filmmaker, I really suggest you check out Project: Valkyrie. It is a good lesson on indie filmmaking pitfalls and how to finish and distribute a project with a non-existent budget.

I'm guessing that this film was made up during late night drinking sessions after their D and D game was over. Either that or they all met on MySpace and said, in that great Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland tradition "Let's make a movie!"
This is what happens when you give a bunch of dorks a video camera and a mac with some video editing software.
This would have been suitable for YouTube or Google Video, in that it would have been free. And it would have been amusing, but certainly not worth the purchase price.
A poor script, poor acting, and poor production qualities doom this project from the start.
If you want to see how passion for the subject matter and a low budget can actually make a masterpiece of a movie, check out the H P Lovecraft Historical Society's "Call of Cthulhu" movie.
Give "Project Valkyrie" a wide, wide pass.

- William Mize
PWA Shamus Award Nominee, the Denton Ward and Monty Crocetti mystery series