Caffeinated Clint
By Clint Morris
If just one of the cards isn’t completely snug in the , then the whole lot of them will come crashing down.
Its got James Bond in it. Its director did the amazing 80s war film Glory. It features the wonderful Liev Schrebier. It was filmed in lavish Lithuanian landscape. And yet ”Defiance” still manages to disappoint.
The loose card in this instance might be script. It’s just not that good. The storyline is good – and an important one – but its execution leaves a lot to be desired. Rather than let the story play out and stretch the thing long enough so that we get to know the people in this particular tale just that bit better, this abrupt and short extract from the history books seems quite content being a teaser for a longer, better movie that’ll never come.
Directed by Ed Zwick, the WWII drama fixes around Jewish brothers (Craig, Schreiber and Jamie Bell of “Billy Elliot†fame) living in Nazi-occupied Poland who escape into the Belarussian forest where they join Russian resistance fighters in battling the Nazis. Throughout the war, they build a village inside the forest and save the lives of more than 1,200 Jews. Its all based on what sounds like an incredible true story.
Craig (“Quantum of Solaceâ€) is perfectly fine as the softer of the brothers, Schrieber (“The Manchurian Candidateâ€) good as the more gung-ho sibling, but it’s the lavish backdrop of Lithuania that’s the real star of the show. And considering the importance of the story being told, that’s either a great benefit or a damn shame. Shouldn’t we be more keyed into the story itself than to how pretty the trees behind James Bond look?
Considering its tragic subject matter “Defiance†should really have socked viewers in the guts. Instead, all it really amounts too at the end of the day is an accumulation of dry Kleenex. Yes, it’s a good movie – but it should’ve been much more.
