Defiance (2008)

True story about a group of Belarusian Jews (at its peak numbering 1,200) who lived out in the woods for years evading Nazi’s during World War II. The movie starts out unspectacularly, we’ve all heard the valiant Jews escape the Nazi’s stories so many time’s any consistent movie goer is in danger of becoming numbed (and to this something we really shouldn’t become numbed too). Anyway, I’d have even described this movie as bad in its first 20-30 minutes, but it steadily improves. There are the almost unavoidable clichés yes, and while the story is a true one the dynamic of brothers Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber (there falling out and reconciliation) feels like a script device. But then you do get to like this group of people, feel for them, even though there are no outstanding characterizations in the film. You get a few things you haven’t seen before, the building of the settlements in the woods, the German Shepard attacking a women on a ‘food mission’, the communal beating of a captured Nazi solder by the frustrated refuge’s, the dynamics of Jewish solders in the Red Army. In short all the forms there, but the emotional impact still felt a little short for me, and what there was dissipated kind of quickly. B-.