Defiance (***)

Directed by: Edward Zwick
Starring: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, George MacKay, Alexa Davalos, Mia Wasikowska, Iben Hjelje
Seen: April 2nd 2009

*** Out of ****

Based on true events, Defiance tells the story of the few Jews who didn’t take it meekly during World War II, who didn’t allow the German anti-Semitism to get them down, who fought back against the oppression. As Nazi forces are sweeping through Eastern Europe in 1941 hunting Jews, four brothers are hiding in the forest after their parents are killed by local police under orders from (being paid to by) the Germans. The four brothers are Tuvia (Craig), Zus (Schreiber), Asael (Bell), and Aron (MacKay) Bielski, and they become known, in time, for running one of the biggest Jewish ‘resistances’, eventually saving 1200 Jews from the Germans over the course of nearly three years.

The film tells of Tuvia being the more passive of the brothers, and Zus the more aggressive one. They have a falling out and Tuvia remains as the leader of the renegade Jews, while Zus joins up with a local company of Soviet partisans, who agree on protecting the Jews in exchange for supplies. As can be expected, things don’t always go according to plan, and we follow the groups during various stages of trial and tribulation, with hunger causing conflict in the camps, but with all the members also quickly trying to re-establish their lives, finding romance and friendship along the way.

Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber really adds electricity on screen, as their passionate acting spills over to those around them, the two duelling brothers who never stop loving each other, but have difficulty living with each other. Jamie Bell as the younger brother Asael who takes leadership of the group over Tuvia at a crucial stage also brings power to the screen, and the supporting cast also works wonders with the story. MacKay is only given small involvement as the youngest brother, with the three older brothers’ love interests playing bigger roles than him. Lilka (Davalos, or Kyra from The Chronicles of Riddick) is a beautiful girl Tuvia starts to slowly fall for after hearing of his wife’s death, Bella (Hjelje, Laura from High Fidelity(2000)) plays a timid woman who gives Zus some of the strength he needs to cope, and Chaya (Wasikowska) is an innocent younger Jewish woman who ends up marrying Asael in a scene that both rises tension and releases it, as it is cut with scenes of the Soviet soldiers sabotaging a German convoy.

Defiance has its moments of tense brilliance, at one stage, as the group overturns a German motorcyclist, along the road come more Germans in a car, and then just as the car situation is resolved, even more come along in a large soldier carrier truck. The forest battles and fleeing for survival is tense, and the film never reverts to overtly pushing holocaust horrors into your face. It is however not a story you’ll find completely unforgettable, and at the end you are glad for the survivors and their offspring (which is said to be in the tens of thousands by now), but that’s it, you don’t feel much more. But for a film about guerrilla warfare in the forest environment you won’t necessarily go much better than Defiance.