X
- 2008
- R
- Paramount Vantage
- 2 h 17 m
- 2008
- R
- Paramount Vantage
- 2 h 17 m
Summary Based on an extraordinary true story, Defiance is an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II. (Paramount Vantage)
Directed By: Edward Zwick
Written By: Clayton Frohman, Nechama Tec, Edward Zwick
- 2008
- R
- Paramount Vantage
- 2 h 17 m
- 2008
- R
- Paramount Vantage
- 2 h 17 m
Defiance
58
6.9
Where to Watch
Summary Based on an extraordinary true story, Defiance is an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II. (Paramount Vantage)
Directed By: Edward Zwick
Written By: Clayton Frohman, Nechama Tec, Edward Zwick
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 34 Critic Reviews
58
53% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
47% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Metascore
Mixed or Average
Based on 34 Critic Reviews
58
53% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
47% Mixed
16 Reviews
16 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.
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).
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 93 User Ratings
6.9
59% Positive
55 Ratings
55 Ratings
34% Mixed
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
6% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 93 User Ratings
6.9
59% Positive
55 Ratings
55 Ratings
34% Mixed
32 Ratings
32 Ratings
6% Negative
6 Ratings
6 Ratings
A brilliant and true story that deserves more attention. I find it impressive that the lead, an English man, was able to speak Russian for the entire movie.
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This film is America's way of glorifying unsung heroes of some of the world's darkest eras. I love it, and I doubt I'm alone. The acting is great, the setting is portrayed perfectly, and it brilliantly balances drama with action and not too much cheese. At the time of my review, its on Netflix so what's there to lose?!
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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.
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.
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.
Depressingly predictable in its dialogue and dramatic beats, Defiance is most interesting as a study of unlikely leaders.
Daniel Craig will always be associated with the James Bond film franchise having tackled the lead role in two highly successful Bond movies (with a few more on the horizon). Craig's superb as the super-spy and boy can he handle action scenes. But Craig's not just Bond. He's taken on a diverse collection of film roles over the past 15 years, delivering outstanding performances as a killer in Infamous, a member of the Israeli team assembled after the massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich, and a business man never referred to by name whose plans for retirement from the drug trade are put on hold in Layer Cake. Craig adds yet another exceptional performance to his resume with his starring role in the dramatic thriller, Defiance, set in 1941. Directed by Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond) and adapted for the screen by Zwick and Clay Frohman from the non-fiction book by Nechama Tec, Defiance tells the true story of three brothers Tuvia, Zus and Asael Bielski who beat incredible odds and ultimately kept thousands of Jews safe from being murdered by the **** and their supporters. Defiance is an absolutely heartbreaking and heroic tale, and one that hadn't seen the light of day on the big screen prior to this film. The real Bielski brothers never sought fame or recognition for their bravery and so this is one true story that will be new to most moviegoers. And it's definitely one that deserves to be shared with a worldwide audience as the Bielskis accomplished the near-impossible and saved untold lives. Tuvia (Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) escaped into the forest surrounding their family's home in Stankevich (now Belarus) after discovering **** collaborators had murdered their parents. Farmers by trade, the brothers were capable, resourceful men able to live off the land. But the Bielskis didn't just want to hide out and try to survive the massacre of their fellow Jewish citizens. The brothers wanted to avenge the deaths of their family and friends and did so by saving men, women, children, and the elderly from falling into the hands of the **** and their supporters. At the urging (basically under the direct order of) Tuvia, the oldest brother, anyone seeking food and shelter was accepted into the Bielskis' shelter in the forest. Zus initially wasn't a supporter of Tuvia's plan to take in all refugees, believing they would weaken the group's chances at survival. But Tuvia prevailed and the gathering grew into a society of 1,000+ people, all tasked with working to help the group survive. Temporary housing was built, booby traps were set out to protect the camp, and those capable of handling a gun patrolled the settlement's perimeter. The refugees survived by dealing with farmers and other merchants sympathetic to their situation as well as stealing resources meant for the army. Tuvia, the group's leader, did whatever was necessary to keep order in this makeshift community. He had strict rules everyone in the community had to adhere to and punishment for disobeying could be brutal. But whatever Tuvia did, he did for the good of this group which became known as the Bielski otriad. Thousands who would have perished in the Holocaust lived as the direct result of his actions. Surprisingly, the fact Craig, Schreiber, and Bell in no way resemble brothers doesn't distract from the film. Craig and Schreiber play tough as nails men who butt heads but also obviously love and respect each other. Jamie Bell is slight in build and seems slightly out of place, but his presence is strong enough to carry off the part of the younger brother who finds love in this makeshift community. I haven't read Nechama Tec's book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, and so I can't say with any certainty how closely Zwick and Frohman stuck to the source material. As with most films based on books, artistic license was probably taken to make the story flow cinematically. In interviews, Craig and Schreiber said in actuality there was much more brutality and killing than is portrayed in the film. And I have to believe Zwick and Frohman added in more romance than Tec's book revealed. But the basic story is supposedly much the same as how it played out back in 1941. It's incredible to me that I knew nothing about this story after all these years and all these tales of heroics by Germans keeping Jewish citizens safe (such as recounted in Schindler's List). Filmed in the forest outside of Vilnius, Lithuania instead of on a soundstage to add as much realism as possible to this retelling of the Bielskis' story, Defiance is a compelling human drama of revenge, honor, hope, and survival. It's also an engaging action film, although the action never overwhelms the story. Craig, Schreiber and Bell give performances that remind us this is above all the story of men making a stand during one of the bleakest moments in history.
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A Society in the Forest, Banding Together to Escape Persecution.
Around the midpoint of “Defiance,” Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig) sits astride his horse, welcoming new arrivals to his encampment in the Belarussian forest. It is late in 1941, and the newcomers, like the other people in this makeshift settlement, are Jews from surrounding towns and villages who have fled the savagery of the German Army and its local collaborators. Tuvia addresses these terrified survivors in a calm, authoritative voice, assuring them that here, under his protection, they will be free and safe. A little boy looks up in amazement at this heroic figure and asks his mother, “Is he a Jew?”
“Jews don’t fight,” a Russian officer remarks when he meets Tuvia and his younger, angrier brother Zus (Liev Schreiber). “These Jews do” is the response, and also the gist of Edward Zwick’s stiff, musclebound new movie. Based on a book by Nechama Tec, “Defiance” tells the true and astonishing story of the Bielski partisans, who fought the **** and rescued hundreds of Jews through the darkest years of war and genocide.
Tuvia and Zus — along with two other brothers, Asael (Jamie Bell) and Aron (George MacKay), who is still a child — meet up in the forest after their parents have been murdered by local authorities working in league with the German invaders. The Bielski boys are rough characters — a history of smuggling and petty criminality is hinted at — who can hold their vodka and know how to shoot, how to steal and how to navigate the dense and trackless forests.
In contrast, many of the people they rescue are what Zus calls malbushim, the Hebrew word for clothes, which he uses to describe people he thinks are worthless. And this film’s characters more or less are what they wear. Tuvia cuts a dashing figure in his brown leather jacket. An older schoolteacher (Allan Corduner) with a fedora, a fine scarf and a nicely trimmed beard arrives coughing and quoting Talmud.
Another malbesh, Isaac (Mark Feuerstein), with round glasses and a nebbishy vest, can barely use a hammer. “What is it you do?” Zus asks. “I suppose you could say I was — I am — an intellectual,” Isaac stammers. Zus cannot hide his amusement, or his contempt: “This is a job?”
Well, not really, but it’s always useful, at least in a movie like this one, to have someone around to say things like “At least Descartes recognized the subjective nature of existence” or “If my friends at The Socialist Review could see me now!” And in the society that Tuvia builds in the forest (after Zus, more a fighter than an organizer, joins up with a Red Army brigade), intellectuals do have a role.
In addition to comic relief, Isaac and the schoolteacher provide a measure of ethical guidance and political counsel. Or at least they seem to. “You have ideas about community?” Tuvia asks Isaac, and later, when Tuvia, on horseback, utters the word “community,” Isaac smiles.
Mr. Zwick, whose other movies include “Glory,” “The Siege” and “Blood Diamond,” is many things, but subtle is not one of them. (Remember that horse in the first paragraph? Did I mention that it was white?) He wields his camera with a heavy hand, punctuating nearly every scene with emphatic nods, smiles or grimaces as the occasion requires. His pen is, if anything, blunter still, with dialogue that crashes down on the big themes like a blacksmith’s hammer.
And the performances he wrings from his cast would not be out of place in an old Second Avenue Yiddish melodrama or a modern Egyptian soap opera. Just as the intellectuals are on hand to argue and fret, so are the women called upon to gaze at the Bielskis with wide, melting eyes. Three of them (Alexa Davalos, Iben Hjejle and Mia Wasikowska) will be chosen as “forest wives” by Tuvia, Zus and Asael. “You saved my life,” says Lilka (Ms. Davalos) to Tuvia as they lie together, wrapped in furs and illuminated by golden sunlight. “No. You saved mine,” he says.
But while Mr. Zwick is frequently clumsy, he is not dumb. You might even say that he is an intellectual, since “Defiance” is animated as much by an idea as by rousing, emphatic emotions. It is most interesting, and most persuasive, not as a chronicle of heroic action but rather as a series of arguments — mainly between the patient Tuvia and the hot-headed Zus — about justice, righteousness and how a decent society should function. Zus is a man of action, Tuvia a man of principle, but in good dialectical fashion each one cedes some ground to the other — Tuvia by condoning and committing necessary acts of violence, Zus by saying something nice every once in a while.
Their story is surely worth dramatizing — and may indeed be well served by this director’s square-jawed narrative style — but Mr. Zwick is not simply adding a chapter to the cinematic annals of the Holocaust. It’s not exactly false, but it’s more than a little inauthentic.
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I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it again. Defiance is a fairly run of the mill film that, considering the subject matter, is not as inspiring or emotionally intense as it could have been. The plot just seems to move along without being able to grab you and pull you in to the plight of the Bielski group, despite the deaths and suffering of it's members. Also, the plot doesn't really feature any twists, none in fact, so any increase in excitement or suspense is really limited.
The acting scores a plus for the film, if you are prepared to accept some fluctuating Eastern European accents. All three leads turn in good performances but the supporting cast of Alexa Davalos and Allan Corduner are more than worthy of equal mention.
A well made and acted film that surprisingly lacks in genuine drama and emotion.
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Far too long and would have been a bit better if it wasnt. Solid acting by the main cast as well. The film overall though wasnt that interesting and often was rather dull through most parts of the film.
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Awards
Academy Awards, USA
• 1 Nomination
Golden Globes, USA
• 1 Nomination
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards
• 1 Win & 1 Nomination
