Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell star as three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and others in danger. As more refugees come to the forest after hearing of these three heroic brothers, their situation worsens. There are German attacks, sickness, food shortages, and the Russians are real dicks to their Jewish brethren. Sounds like it's got Oscar written all over it, doesn't it? Well, not exactly.
Aryan faced Daniel Craig (nobody thought brown contacts might "Jew" him up a little?) stars as the elder pacifistic brother. Craig exercises restraint, frustration, and gives an overall solid performance. Shreiber is also good as the hot-headed, out for revenge type, while Bell plays the more timid follower. The acting across the board is pretty excellent, and the story, which is based on historical events, is both incredible and profound. It's just not told in any new way, we've seen this kind of movie before, and unfortunately this type of story has been more aptly told.
Speaking of aptitude, I'm a general Edward Zwick fan. He did awesome work with Glory, The Blood Diamond, and The Last Samurai, but his work on this is nothing to turn your nose up to. However, for a man who has displayed such skill when directing action scenes in the past, he sure let us down with this one. Some of the action scenes are so poorly filmed you can barely tell what's happening or who it is happening too. Apart from those few missteps, he does do an overall acceptable job. It's difficult to say what is missing from Defiance, but something definitely is. Maybe the romantic angles were downplayed too much, or perhaps the hope inspiring speeches didn't have a big enough swell. The film is by no means bad and is well worth your time. It just fails to be exceptional. And I think with the pedigree involved with this film, people were expecting something really good, if not great.
Review by: Greg MacLennan
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