MOVIE REVIEW : Defiance

DEFIANCE

Directed by Edward Zwick
Starring Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber


PLOT

Four Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe escape into the Belarussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and about 1,000 Jewish non-combatants.

WHAT I THOUGHT

I was looking forward to this film. I loved the director's last two films - The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond, and I am of course a huge fan of Daniel Craig. The film wasn't as good as I was hoping though.

There were some brilliant moments, most of them being battle scenes (this is what the Director does best!)... but at points the story just seemed far too slow. I liked a lot of the scenes in the camp, but it just dragged on...

The film can be quite shocking though. Some of the deaths are truly brutal. There are also very good performances all around. I love James Newton Howard, but his music here was down so low that I could barely here it! It got nominated for an Oscar... so the Director really should have shown it off more!

One feature I did really like was showing some REAL photos of the characters at the end, emphasising that this is a true story. A very nice touch I must say.

I don't really have much else to say. It is a good film. It just seems very slow, with not a lot happening most of the time. It's just about a group of people trying to survive. It's still worth seeing though for the performances and some of the battle scenes.

BEST MOMENT

A wedding scene that intercuts with a battle scene. Very cleverly edited.

MY RATING

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