Defiance

Director: Edward Zwick
Release Date: April 29^th, 2009
Lead Actor: Daniel Craig
Running Time: 137 mins
Genre: War

Review by Fraser Green

“Based on the most incredible true story”, I had huge expectations for this film, and although it was still very good, I thought it could be better. The film stars Daniel Craig (Casino Royale, Layer Cake), Liev Schreiber (The Manchurian Candidate, Scream) and Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott, Jumper).

Three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Live Schreiber & Jamie Bell) escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into the Belarussian forest, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavour to build a village in order to protect themselves and others in danger.

When I first saw previews for this film, I had great expectations for it and was waiting for another masterpiece from director Edward Zwick after the amazing “Blood Diamond” and the forever great “Glory” back in 1989. This was still a very good film, but it failed to absorb me the way I was hoping. The three leads are strong in their roles and the film outlines the importance of this event that occurred during World War II. However, I found that the film started off incredibly fast, moving along quickly and making it hard to stay in line with everything, even though it all became clear soon after. Obviously the Oscar nomination disagree with me, but I thought that the musical score was quite weak and failed to seriously capture the main sequences of this film, even though Zwick managed to back it up by other means on occasions. Also, I found this film to be very predictable, even though it based on a true story which I have never before heard. It’s hard for me to review this film, as it was honestly very good, but it failed to really absorb me into its story. This could be masked by the fact that I recently saw “Valkyrie”, which I loved sincerely, and this is a very different type of war film as opposed to Bryan Singer’s war-time thriller. Not Zwick’s best work, but still one worth the time. Although mostly very good, it seems to lack the emotional punch that the real story displays.

My Rating: 3 and ½ stars

~ by cade14 on April 29, 2009.