"The Night of the Generals" is a murder mystery with Valkyrie, the plan to murder Hitler, as a SUBPLOT. It doesn't exactly work like a Swiss watch movement. The search for the killer, led by Major (later Lt. Col.) Grau (Omar Sharif), gets lost for a time and Valkyrie is inserted rather late in the film. But the acting is superb, especially by Peter O'Toole as General Tanz, an utterly ruthless killing machine, Tom Courtnay as Corporal Hartman, who is assigned to show Tanz the sights of Paris, Donald Pleasance and Charles Gray as two other German generals who are suspects, along with General Tanz, in the murder of a Polish prostitute in Warsaw, and Phillipe Noiret as a high ranking French policeman who helps Lt. Col. Grau with his search for the killer. Christopher Plummer appears briefly as Field Marshall Rommel, but he isn't given much to do.<br /><br />For a star of his caliber, Sharif is strangely passive in his role. The same cannot be said of O'Toole who is in utter control for most of his time on the screen but turns psychotic when confronting a painting by Van Gogh that exemplifies the latter's madness and lets loose the madness of General Tanz.<br /><br />This isn't a great film, but it manages barely to sustain the suspense of the murder investigation and when the suspense is in remission, General Tanz successfully soaks up the viewer's attention. Happily, Tom Cruise is nowhere to be seen. Valkyrie is launched and fails without him.