Review: Defiance (2/5)

Defiance
(Edward Zwick)
Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber,Jamie Bell,
Running time: 136 minutes. (15A)

Defiance stars Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell and 116 bottles of vodka as the real-life Bielski brothers, a Jewish trio who, in wartime Poland, led a successful resistance against the Nazis. They retreat deep into the chilly pine forest, glug vodka, take hundreds of Jews into their care, glug vodka, and fight a bloody partisan struggle. They also free some 1,200 Jews from the Polish ghetto.
Daniel Craig, with his Slavic steel eyes, becomes the reluctant noble hero. His ox-like younger brother Zus (Liev Schreiber) joins the Soviet army. Jews do not fight, someone offers. These guys do – and brutally. The film gets stuck in with a moral righteousness. Craig’s Tuvia executes an entire family of Nazi collaborators in cold blood.
It is interesting to see a Holocaust film offer Jewish empowerment against the Nazis. The movie, however, is decidedly old-fashioned and needs pruning. Director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) just can’t resist the tropes of the triumph-over-adversity yarn. He even starts pairing couples off. “I want protection,” says one bedraggled lady to Zus. So he gives it to her.