Don't Fuck With The Jews

Defiance
2008, dir. Edward Zwick. 2 hours 17 minutes
stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell

"Don't Fuck With The Jews"

So says Daniel Craig's character in Munich, from 2005. Three years later, Craig returns as a vengeful Jew in Defiance, the latest earnest action flick from Edward Zwick, director of Glory, Legends of the Fall, and The Last Samurai. Defiance is the true story of the Bielski brothers of Belarus, who, after the Nazis have come and murdered their parents, escape to the woods to hide, only to be followed by a handful of their fellow villagers. That handful slowly grows to be over a hundred (and in fact, ended up being over a thousand), and they form a small community in the forest, building huts out of mud and trees, and stealing food from nearby farms.

Craig plays Tuvia Bielski, the oldest brother, who becomes commander of the community, trying to straddle the rather thin line between survival and humanity. Liev Schreiber is Zus Bielski, who is a bit more hot-headed, and eventually tires of following orders from his brother and joins up with the Russian partisans. Jamie Bell is Asael Bielski, on the cusp of adulthood and trying to emulate a bit of both of his older brothers (there is a fourth, youngest Bielski, but I don't think the kid had any actual lines in the movie).

Defiance is the latest in a line of Nazi-related movies in the past year, but it is by far the most Hollywood of them all (yes, even more so than Valkyrie). The film, especially in the first half, is filled almost constantly with jokes, and although that may not be a bad thing for the actual characters, I found that it took away from the gravity of the situation. The actors all speak with thick accents of varying believability, and yet sometimes the film switches to Russian with English subtitles. I think the parts spoken in English are what would have been spoken in Yiddish in reality, but I'm not sure, and I found it confusing. Lastly, although the action was exciting, I found that the sequence of events was so cliched that it was difficult to believe in it, whether it happened that way or not.

Overall, a decent action flick, but don't expect any depth near the level of something like Schindler's List.

3 stars

PS. For some reason, neither Microsoft Word nor Excel will let me spell Liev ... they switch it automatically to Live, and I cannot undo it. Does anyone know how to fix that.