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Visual:		7.0
Audio:		3.0
Acting:		7.0
Writing:		7.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Edward Zwick
Writer(s):	Clayton Frohman & Edward Zwick
Starring:	Alexa Davalos • Allan Corduner • Daniel Craig • Jamie Bell • Liev Schreiber • Mark Feuerstein
Genre:	Action • Drama • War
Website:	http://www.defiancemovie.com/
Release Date:	January 16, 2009
Rated:

Despite constant charge from oodles of Christians that Hollywood is a breeding ground for secularism, there is perhaps no other symbolic device more overused in movies than the Jesus motif, always ready to christen a hero as a martyr by association. Behold, here is a film that dares to compare its hero to a different Biblical prophet. For the purposes of this movie’s heavy-handed parallel, Daniel Craig is the second coming of Moses, leading the Jewish people away from persecution during the Holocaust.

Defiance is the true story—it has moments of extreme cheese and questionable credibility, but they are supposedly accurate accounts—of the Bielski partisans, a group of Jews surviving World War II in Poland (now Belarus) under the leadership of the Bielski brothers. The title refers to their refusal to submit to the Nazi regime and their refusal to give up even when faced with famine—or maybe it’s just referring to the fact that it defies your typical Holocaust movie. Unlike Schindler’s List or its ilk, here the Jews are not victims waiting for their audience-approved tearjerking deaths. They are fighters, paving their own way and kicking Nazi arsch whenever they want to.

The movie takes liberties with the Bielskis. Depicting merely 4 of the actual 12 siblings, it also switched their ages around to fit movie-ready characterizations that better supply a dramatic need. Tuvia (Daniel Craig), the eldest, is the level headed leader who believes that laying low is the Jews’ best bet at survival. Doubting that theory is second brother Zus (Liev Schriber), the wild man who takes “offense is the best defense” to heart and joins the Soviet army so he can go kill some Nazis. In reality, the second eldest was Asael, who in the film is portrayed as a shy teenager (Jamie Bell) forged into a man by hardship. The youngest is Aron (George MacKay), who functions as the group’s scout. Seeing how much of it must’ve been fictional, the relationship between the brothers serves as the film’s real strength. Dubious accents aside, Craig and Schreiber compliment each other really well as two different kinds of tough guys, selling a believable sibling rivalry that’s still dripping with brotherly love. There is an apparent sense of family between them, made even better by showing Asael’s growth into becoming as assertive as his idol Tuvia.

After seeing their village attacked by the Nazi, their parents and friends shot down like dogs, the four Bielski brothers escape into the woods. They collect fellow Jews in need along the way, evading the Germans by staying hidden. Before long, these gathering Jews have a camp and a working community, spreading the legend of the Bielski partisans, even though they would constantly hit rough patches. They embrace all Jews who come their way seeking refuge, and even rescue hundreds from the ghettos. It would be easy to mistake Defiance for a re-imagining of The Exodus, if not for all the blatant reminders of “Tuvia is Moses #2” that kill any chance of a meaningful comparison. There’s even a scene where the Bielski partisans meet a watery dead end with the Nazi in hot pursuit. The allegory’s already obvious enough, but the screenplay felt it necessary to add a line like “God would not part the water for us. We’d have to do it ourselves.”

Director Edward Zwick tends to take these complex stories and turn them into familiar and neatly digestible entertainment, such were the case with his previous films Glory, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond. In its first hour, Defiance fully establishes its gritty identity and is a much more effective movie, playing more like an urban revenge thriller—Death Wish in WWII!—than a war or Holocaust film. It grows progressively worse, however, as it gets increasingly cliched. By the end of it, it’s become just another WWII movie with cheap inspirational speeches, exaggerated battle scenes and a weepy violin-heavy soundtrack.