Virtual History: The Secret Plot to Kill Hitler (2004) (TV)

User Rating:

6.8/10   

Director:

David McNab

Release Date:

28 November 2004 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | History

Plot:

Computer animation, historical documents, archive film, and other media help recreate July 20 1944, the day Hitler's generals attempted to assassinate him. |

Plot Keywords:

Historical | Assassination Plot | Archive Footage | Franklin D. Roosevelt | Reenactment

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Tom Streithorst	...	Narrator (voice)
Warren Kimball	...	Himself - Roosevelt historian
Andrew Roberts	...	Himself - Churchill historian
Simon Sebag Montefiore	...	Himself - Stalin historian
Berthold Graf von Stauffenberg	...	Himself - von Stauffenberg's eldest son
Joachim Fest	...	Himself - Hitler historian
Lothar Kettenacker	...	Himself - von Stauffenberg historian

Runtime:

120 min | Finland:88 min (DVD)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Certification:

Finland:K-3

Company:

Discovery Channel

Doesn't quite work but nice idea though

Getting four actors and putting on them the faces of Hitler, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt with the help of powerful computers to create a factual story that happened on July 20th 1944 may sound like a good idea but when put into practice the concept unfortunately doesn't work. The faces of the world leaders of 1944 look very very stiff like they've all had a serious stroke and is so very obvious when they talk. I was like "just talk properly!!!" and occasionally they look like zombies straight from a George Romero movie! This is mostly about what if all these world leaders had a film crew following them about their daily businesses on July 20th 1944. The film is made to look like archive footage but i think the main reason was because the CGI faces looked so unrealistic that they thought that making it look old might make it less obvious to the viewer.

The actual historians in this looked and sounded fake like they were actors pretending to be historians. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't but they didn't seem like your typical historian like you would get in any other kind of documentary which i've seen hundreds of.

The background detail is pretty much perfect though and the story is interesting. One thing that bugs me is that even though it is quite detailed they failed to mention that this failed plot to kill Hitler was the main reason that Field Marshall Rommel was ordered to commit suicide even though he knew little about it. Way to go guys. Forgot to add that little detail.

Oh yeah, what it's about. It's about a group of high ranking officers of the German Army who decide to assassinate Hitler because they know he is messing everything up and they don't want Germany and Eastern Europe to fall in the hands of Stalin's Communist Russia.

I caught this on the Discovery Channel last night and i was a little disappointed with the computerised faces. This should have been made in ten years time or something when i think computers would be able to achieve this idea flawlessly. There is a little bit of untampered archive footage in it so it deserves a watch though even if it's for the story alone. 7/10.