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Defiance
Mixed or average reviews
Based on 34 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 99 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | War
Written by:
Ed Zwick
Clay Frohman
Directed by: Ed Zwick
Release Date:
Theatrical: December 31, 2008
DVD: June 2, 2009
Running Time: 137 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R for violence and language
Starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, Allan Corduner, and Mark Feuerstein
Based on an extraordinary true story, Defiance is an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II. (Paramount Vantage)
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold
It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.
Read Full Review >Premiere Gene Newman
The perfect antidote to the post-holiday blues. It's exciting, well-acted, touching, and genuine.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
The battle scenes are well choreographed and contain enough uncertainty to make them genuinely exciting, but one would expect no less from a man who has overseen Civil War engagements (Glory) and Japanese strife (The Last Samurai).
Read Full Review >Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey
Here, Jews are not victims of genocide, but victors in the organized resistance against it.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Connie Ogle
The film isn't much of a character study; too many of its secondary characters are stereotypes, and it never fully engages our emotions the way "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" did.
Read Full Review >Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer
It's a heroic story, and Zwick frames it rather too strenuously as an antidote to the generic Holocaust stories of Jewish passivity and martyrdom. And yet, as a piece of historical redress, a great service has been done in bringing this narrative to the screen.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Ann Hornaday
It's impossible to watch Defiance without experiencing a vicarious thrill of resistance and revenge.
Read Full Review >Time Richard Corliss
Defiance says that it took grit, desperation and courage under fire to say, "Not this time," and fire back. Beyond that, it's a pretty good movie -- a bold, uneasy mix of romance, political debate and vigorous action.
Read Full Review >The New Yorker David Denby
Defiance, as it turns out, makes insistent emotional demands, and those who respond to it at all, as I did, are likely to go all the way and even come out of it feeling slightly stunned.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Zwick offers excitingly staged moments, but once you get past the novelty of WWII Jews acting this heroically macho, Defiance bogs down in a not very well-developed script.
Read Full Review >Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt
Zwick may be the definition of a modern blockbuster filmmaker, but he's also spent his entire career struggling to find the balance between opposing impulses – the sentimentalist's desire for emotional-historical heft and the artist's fascination with conflicted humanity – a struggle that's all over Defiance.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
The best performance, because it's more nuanced, is by Liev Schreiber. His Zus Bielski is more concerned with the big picture, more ideological, more driven by tactics.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone Peter Travers
For all the film's flaws, this is a war story told with passion about a band of brothers that still has the power to inspire.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips
The film should've aimed higher, given all that these people endured to have their story told.
Read Full Review >New York Post Lou Lumenick
This promising premise is turned into basically an overgrown TV movie.
Read Full Review >USA Today Claudia Puig
The tale of the resistance movement in Belorussia is undeniably inspiring and ideally suited for a cinematic rendering. But Defiance resists bold, passionate storytelling and delivers something rather conventional.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Jason Buchanan
A Holocaust film that's light on sentimentality but high on human drama, Defiance tells one of those remarkable survival stories that's so incredible it must be true.
Read Full Review >Village Voice Ella Taylor
There are subtitles and vaguely East European accents; there is romance and rebirth, tears and regular pauses for gallows humor (at which we Jews are known to be very good, on account of our long history of persecution).
Read Full Review >NPR Bob Mondello
It's an inspiring story, if one that doesn't need quite as much poetic inspiration as Ed Zwick's movie insists on giving it, with dialogue that's too often ornate and parable-inflected.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen
That butting of heads, as performed by actors as strong and soulful as Craig and Schreiber, lends Defiance an emotional charge, even as the film itself struggles dramatically to find its way out of those woods.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Joe Neumaier
Craig, far from James Bond but still swaggering, makes a leathery, craggy commander, and Schreiber - who'll show his full-on action chops this summer in the Hugh Jackman "Wolverine" movie - is tough but sullen. Yet all this old-style moviemaking doesn't always pay off.
Read Full Review >Empire Nev Pierce
An amazing true tale is somewhat diminished by second-hand storytelling: entirely admirable, largely entertaining, and yet curiously hollow.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
Defiance comes off as plodding and workmanlike -- and even in the midst of Zwick's too-careful machinations, it's a movie that's unsure of what it wants to be.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Ty Burr
Depressingly predictable in its dialogue and dramatic beats, Defiance is most interesting as a study of unlikely leaders.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall
Zwick, intent on correcting the perception of Jews as passive victims, lets the action set pieces overwhelm the more intimate scenes, several of which are already diminished by stilted dialogue.
Read Full Review >San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
As a drama - an epic drama, no less, clocking in at 137 minutes - its fascination is diffused, and the movie becomes something of a long slog.
Read Full Review >Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow
The movie leaves you in an awful tangle of amazement and disbelief: Amazement that Tuvia Bielski did turn a group of civilians into a nimble fighting force and a commune that could defend itself, but disbelief at his accomplishment's stagey and banal rendering.
Read Full Review >The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
What is puzzling is how Edward Zwick has taken an extraordinary real-life story about a handful of people who defied huge odds, and turned it into an utterly conventional war movie.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Matthew Sorrento
A little sentimentality can fuel a lot of action, yet Zwick buries his film in cloying guilt, in the end sinking Defiance with the holocaust film's bait.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin
There are lots of movies about Jews suffering, dying, and surviving in Europe during World War II, but precious few about Jews fighting back. So why does everything in Defiance feel so doggedly familiar?
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan
Defiance has some genuine strengths but also some weaker elements, and these opposing traits battle it out kind of the way the contentious Bielskis fought not only the Germans but each other.
Read Full Review >Variety Todd McCarthy
A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
Read Full Review >The New York Times A.O. Scott
Defiance presents itself as an explicit correction of the cultural record, a counterpoint to all those lachrymose World War II tales of helplessness and victimhood. This is a perfectly honorable intention, but the problem is that, in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity, Mr. Zwick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Clayton Frohman) ends up affirming them.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.0 (out of 10) based on 99 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Carlos T gave it a7:
This was an extremely compelling story to tell, but subpar acting is what mostly kept it from being great. It was great how many of the secondary characters did get some attention as those actors seemed to do a much better job than the main ones. The action sequences were very well done and very enjoyable, however there is always some doubt as to how the Bielskis ever became so good at fighting even though they were only farmers. Overall, it is a good first attempt on an untold, but powerful story.
[Anonymous] gave it a9:
This movie was fantastic! I find it extremely hard to believe the critics rated it as poorly as they did, but I suppose it is their job to shit all over things. This movie is very good in the historical accuracy department, and drama and tension run high. Excellent, would watch again.
Elias C gave it an8:
Very good thoughtful film. Good acting. A story, though simplified here, that needs to be told. Low user ratings may be because this is not an action film (viewers - do not expect James Bond), action sequences are realistic (viewers - do not expect fake fiery explosions), and perhaps because the film does not explain enough of the details of this true historical event for viewers too young to know what WWII was really like.
Sam M. gave it a2:
A story worth telling yet so remarkably badly made it hurts to watch this film.
Jay H. gave it a7:
Excellent production values, a solid story and a great cast make this movie a winner. The score is great as is the cinematography. Moving screenplay. It's a bit long though.
Bob N gave it an8:
Once again, a good film hated by critics. I was not expecting much, but was surprised. Blood Diamond was a fantastic film. Glory, top notch. This is a film about survival. It does not go too deep into the philosophical dillemas, but hey, how can you when you are trying to not die? I liked this film because it has no true message. The various characters find that the various ism, communism, zionism, facism, etc. hold no water in the face of death. I respect that, for it is true. In the end, it all is a matter of staying alive, for the man next to you, and for your family. Great movie. Critics need to live a little...in the real world.
David F gave it a3:
Action not bad but the accents drove me crazy, a mish-mash of them and languages, people speaking Russian for one sentence then switching to Russian-accented English, so you're always painfully aware they are acting. Ruined the film for me.
