After their parents are murdered by German troops, brothers Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and Asael Bielski (Jamie Bell) take refuge in the woods of eastern Poland, where they discover other Jewish Poles on the run from the occupying Nazis. Forming a ragtag partisan band, the Bielskis and their charges beg, borrow and steal to survive, alternately setting up makeshift camps and moving deeper into the woods in hopes of evading the German army, all the while trying to retain some sense of the life they once lived.

CRITIQUE

When he’s at the top of his game, Edward Zwick is a master at effortlessly combining good human drama and exciting action sequences; Glory and Courage Under Fire are prime examples. But at times Zwick has a tendency to fall back on clichés and heavy-handed melodrama; Blood Diamond and Legends of the Fall are prime examples. Defiance is both the worst movie of Zwick’s career so far and the most extreme case of his baser instincts getting the better of him. Lazy, predictable, and half-baked, it’s the sort of product you fear you’ll get when you hear a movie is based on a true story, not the sort you hope you’ll get.

Given the setting and emotionally rich subject matter, this should have been a home run for the director, but the script--co-written by Zwick and Clayton Frohman, inspired by Nechama Tec’s book Defiance: The Bielski Partisans--takes these little-known historical events and fails to make them compelling or interesting. I’d never heard of the Bielski partisans until I first became aware of this movie, so I was hoping Defiance would inform me, but that didn’t happen. I came out knowing little more about these people than I did going in, and what little I did learn was imparted by the movie’s coda.

The movie itself taught me nothing, as I refuse to believe that the Bielski brothers and their fellow partisans spent the better part of World War II wandering through a series of events that mirrored the plot of the sort of paint-by-numbers, rah-rah war flick Hollywood was cranking out at the height of the conflict. Its intentions may be far nobler, but Defiance is nevertheless a Pearl Harbor-like telling of these events, and a Pearl Harbor-like telling is the last thing this story needed.

It’s easy to forgive the movie its lack of historical context; this quality is lacking in so many movies that at this point it’s best if we all just forget it. But Defiance ups the ante--meaning it makes things even worse--by not even bothering to mold its lead characters into anything other than symbols. They’re not developed into the individuals they actually were; in fact, they’re not developed at all.

Craig is the natural leader, Schreiber is the brash one, and Bell is the young one; as far as characterization goes, that’s pretty much it. And the complications you would expect to arise do; Craig and Schreiber clash over how best to survive, which leads to a silly fight (they look like a couple of ten-year-old boys rolling around on a playground) and Schreiber’s decision to join up with some Russian partisans (a move which seems to exist simply so he and Craig can later reconcile).

Also, each brother is given a love interest, but the development of these subplots makes the rest of the movie look rich and complex by comparison. (The woman who would eventually marry Tuvia--played here by Alexa Davalos--seems to appear out of thin air. She shows up out of nowhere, they make eyes at each other, and next thing you know they’re in love.)

Zwick stages several good action sequences, but they also end up feeling perfunctory, primarily because many of them have been forced into the script. They don’t grow out of the story, but instead pop up at predictable intervals, crammed in in hopes of preventing the audience from getting too bored. (It’s been half an hour--we’d better blow something up!) And it’s a decidedly uncomfortable fit, as you have to wonder if these people--many of them elderly and/or sick and malnourished--actually could have gone up against German troops and survived. (In reality they didn’t, doing whatever they could to avoid conflict.)

Take for example the movie’s climax, which features a fight between the partisans and a sizable German squad and Panzer tank. Zwick and Frohman chose to (or maybe had to) end the scene with a John Wayne-esque cavalry rescue, which plays even sillier than it sounds. Rather than rousing any emotions, the scene simply leads you to wonder why a group of people with very little food, even fewer medical supplies, and even less ammunition would leaving a smoking tank and a gaggle of corpses as a calling card. Not exactly a good way to remain inconspicuous, huh?

I know certain compromises had to be made, and that Zwick likely had to include such elements in order to secure financing, but there’s a fine line between making concessions to audiences and being insultingly stupid, and in this case I think Zwick and Frohman have crossed that line. If I want to see Red Dawn--and I don’t, as seeing it once was one time too many--I’ll watch Red Dawn. This story and these individuals deserved better, and Zwick of all people should have known this.

THE VIDEO

The 1.85:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--is a very good representation of the movie’s somewhat odd visuals. Much of the movie has a cold, desaturated look, although at times Zwick and cinematographer Eduardo Serra burn up the contrast, pumping hues to an unnatural degree.

A slightly heavy sheen of grain is on display at times, but it nevertheless has a completely natural appearance. Despite all of the tweaking, depth and detail don’t suffer, although blacks do get crushed a bit at times.

THE AUDIO

The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 audio heavily favors the front channels. Despite taking place primarily in exterior settings, there’s little atmosphere in the mix. Aside from some minor score bleed, the surrounds only really come to life during the action scenes. Dialogue sounds good, and low end action is more appropriate than bombastic (gunshots and explosions have a very realistic quality).

French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included. English, English SDH, French, and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by Edward Zwick is another very good track from the writer/director, covering virtually every aspect of the movie’s production and also providing some background and historical info that (unfortunately) didn’t find its way into the script.

The following extras are all presented in high-definition video:

Defiance: Return to the Forest (26 minutes) is a fairly standard making-of featurette.

Children of the Otriad: The Families Speak (14 minutes) focuses on several descendents of the Bielski brothers, who talk about their ancestors and share family photos and footage from home movies.  

Scoring Defiance (7 minutes) has composer James Newton Howard, Zwick, and violinist Joshua Bell discussing the composing and recording of the movie’s score. Editor Steve Rosenblum also appears, providing input on how the music was integrated into the movie’s final cut. 

Bielski Partisan Survivors (2 minutes) is a montage of recent photos of several surviving members of the actual Bielski partisans.

Two theatrical trailers close out the extras.

FINAL THOUGHT

A huge missed opportunity if ever there was one, Defiance doesn’t work as a drama, a history lesson, or an action movie.