The film DEFIANCE is not as great as the true story behind it, which, in its own way, is as awe-inspiring as Edward Zwick's other military survival film, "Glory."
I was reminded of that earlier (and much better) film on a number of occasions while watching DEFIANCE. I was also reminded of the cinematography of a Terence Malick film. And there was a sequence when one of the married in the forest and the film cross-cuts between the wedding of the younger brother and footage of the middle brother in the middle of a terrifying gun battle that felt much like the baptism scene in "The Godfather."
That was my main problem with DEFIANCE, really. I never fully engaged emotionally because it was so "standard" in so many ways. The dialogue wasn't very inspiring or exceptional, the direction was, as I've pointed out, frequently derivative, and the plot was often predictable (such as when the eldest brother tells the group that no one is to get pregnant...you didn't think that wasn't going to happen, did you?)
Daniel Craig, Liev Schrieber and Jamie Bell are all very good as the Bielski brothers who keep a rag-tag group of Jews together in the Belarussian forest and stand up to both Russian resistance fighters and, more importantly, the Nazis. Schrieber and Bell were particularly good. In fact, there were a number of occassions during the film where I thought the movie was so good that I felt guilty that I wasn't into it much at all in other spots.
I think that given the story and what really happened, I should have been more moved by DEFIANCE than I was, and I have to believe that a part of that is World War II/Holocaust film fatigue. Quite frankly, I've seen enough to last me a few years and hope that filmmakers in 2009 who want to explore war choose from a variety of other conflicts.
And yet, even with that burnout, I know that DEFIANCE was uneven. But it was certainly not bad. And sometimes, it was actually quite good.
2.5 out of 4
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