Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell

Director: Edwark Zwick

Screenplay: Clayton Frohman

Running time: 2 hrs 17 mins

Genre: Drama/Action



CRITIQUE:


After the serious heavyweights of The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond, director Edward Zwick had sought for even more critical topic, the Holocaust. This compelling tale of three Jewish brothers in the Nazi-occupied Belarus who bonded up and resisted the genocide by subsisting in the forests, saving 1,200 Jews along the process, that’s a hundred more than Oskar Schindler saved, people. So we’re reminded that these Bielski brothers should be honoured (and they deserve to be so), and that the Jews had not been entirely passive and defenceless, as most Holocaust films depict them. And this film is supposed to change all that we know about the Jewish image, that some of them had actually dared to defy. As remarkable that true story is – where does Defiance go wrong, when it could have been a great film?


As a film, it stumbles in many places. Defiance is typically a Hollywood film. The screenplay and narrative perfunctorily picks up where most epic films leave its clutter. The film opens in black-and-white documentary reel, promising authenticity, but the rest that follows are laden with artifice. Its beautifully shot, there are sights in the forest to behold, but the rawness and immediacy of its subject matter is absent. Even more so, the relationship between the brothers (the brooding, blustery, reluctant hero Daniel Craig, the irresolute Liev Schrieber, and the adequate Jamie Bell) consists of strange emptiness; we meet them straight ahead of the tale, with parents dead, and venturing into the wild, gathering participants, with very little knowledge of their backgrounds, making us care less. This film offers little to what should be a strong ethos of family. Secondly, perhaps nobody have had a bright idea to advise Zwick to recheck Schindler’s List or Braveheart, in which one certain scene required Craig mounted on a white horse, tossing out pre-battle speech in front of a suddenly inspired audience (cue sweeping score by Howard) – this is pure, plain cliché. The first half trudges and even miniature but significant details were ignored (like how the hole in the wall on a ghetto manned by SS guards was duly unnoticed). This might be called nitpicking, but for a story that assures legitimacy, the screenplay is littered with deux-ex-machina. The last half picks itself up, giving room for action (to which Zwick is obviously is more capable of) that might please historical battle fanatics, but then leads to a conclusion that rather feels contrived when it’s supposed to be blusteringly inspiring.


VERDICT:

Defiance conveys the message well enough, but that is free from art, grace and cinematic density. It boasts an astounding story but it disappointingly sticks with the how-to-make-a-Hollywood-epic rulebook. This material is in serious need of a better direction.



RATING: B-