Defiance
Starring: Daniel Craig, Liev SchreiberStudio: Paramount
MPAA Rating: R (Restricted)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Running Time: 137 minutes
DVD Release: June 2nd 2009
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DVD Review
Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 06/02/2009 Run time: 136 minutes Rating: R
User Reviews
heart is in the right place, but - Rating: 3/5
this is a really clumsy movie. the way they attempt to shift back and forth between tragic moments and happy human interest moments is pretty painful. but this is a story that needs to be told, so it is still worth watching. but you will see what i mean, as soon as they start asking each other what they did before the war, and suddenly it is like an episode of Cheers, the delivery is so telegraphed and TV acted.
Well Done - Rating: 5/5
This is a good movie I watched based on Amazon reviews and I was not disapointed.
Overall a very good movie. - Rating: 4/5
I don't usually watch rated R movies, and there was some language I wish had been left out, but overall it was a very good movie. The acting is superb and it was a part of history I had never seen or heard about before. It showed the good and bad in the main characters. It was a very complicated time in history when good and evil, self defense and murder, were not cut and dried and this movie showed that conflict well. I would recommend it for adults and even older teens.
Terrific story of heroism - Rating: 5/5
Defiance is outstanding, totally moving. In biblical times, during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, forests of Russia, and now as the Israelis have proven for 60 years on the battlefield, Jews are excellent warriors. This is one of the few ever films that shows Jews as noble and heroes. With very few exceptions, Jews are presented by Hollywood as ugly and scum, culminating with Tom Cruise's anti-Semitic character in Tropic Thunder. He may sing and dance, but he's a repulsive, ugly human being. I therefore applaud the courage it took to make and release this film in face of a barrage of well financed effective Arab and Palestinian propoganda, and Obama proclaiming in Cairo that Islam has a "tradition of tolerance" when they practice terror against civilians. He has now rewarded Robinson with a humanitarian award, which is like rewarding George Wallace and the KKK as a humanitarians. As shown in Defiance, the Jews must take care of their own people, which the outnumbered brave Israelis, having learned the lessons of history in Europe and the Arab countries, have been doing with honor. Bravo for Defiance!
Well made film about fascinating, little known story - Rating: 4/5
A very interesting film about the real life story of the four Bielski brothers, who after barely escaping the massacre of their family by the Germans in Belorussia during World War II, moved to the nearby forest and formed a Jewish militia. Soon many more refugees join in (including women, children and elderly people) and the group reached the low thousands. With some aid from the Soviets, they successfully survived the war and even fought back in a number of occasions the German attacks (though apparently they did not engage in combat in real life as much as it appears in the film, very wisely, given the disproportion of forces between the two sides). Daniel Craig is a perfect in the role of Tuvia Bielski, who as the elder of the brothers was the commander of the militias. Much of the humor in the movie comes in the contrast between the tough guy nature of the two elder Bielski brothers and the far more intellectual demeanor of the rest of the group, most of them urban professional types who for the first time in their life have to learn how to survive in the forest. Though the film is somewhat conventional in its narrative, it is nevertheless both fascinating and beguiling. The beautiful, haunting forest where they hid is another attraction to the movie (the film was shot in Lithuania, next door to Belorussia where the action took place). It is somewhat surprising this story was never brought to the screen in sixty something years (this probably have to do with the low profile that the Bielski brothers choose for themselves after the war as well as for the fact that their alliance with the Red Army made their saga somewhat politically uncomfortable during the Cold War).
