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Defiance
Paramount Vantage


4.8

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 85 votes
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MPAA RATING: R for violence and language

Starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, Allan Corduner, and Mark Feuerstein

Based on an extraordinary true story, Defiance is an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II. (Paramount Vantage)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| War
WRITTEN BY:	Ed Zwick Clay Frohman
DIRECTED BY:	Ed Zwick
RELEASE DATE:	Theatrical: December 31, 2008
RUNNING TIME:	137 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama.

Premiere Gene Newman

The perfect antidote to the post-holiday blues. It's exciting, well-acted, touching, and genuine.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The battle scenes are well choreographed and contain enough uncertainty to make them genuinely exciting, but one would expect no less from a man who has overseen Civil War engagements (Glory) and Japanese strife (The Last Samurai).

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

Here, Jews are not victims of genocide, but victors in the organized resistance against it.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

Remarkable, unheralded story.

Miami Herald Connie Ogle

The film isn't much of a character study; too many of its secondary characters are stereotypes, and it never fully engages our emotions the way "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" did.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

It's a heroic story, and Zwick frames it rather too strenuously as an antidote to the generic Holocaust stories of Jewish passivity and martyrdom. And yet, as a piece of historical redress, a great service has been done in bringing this narrative to the screen.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

It's impossible to watch Defiance without experiencing a vicarious thrill of resistance and revenge.

Time Richard Corliss

Defiance says that it took grit, desperation and courage under fire to say, "Not this time," and fire back. Beyond that, it's a pretty good movie -- a bold, uneasy mix of romance, political debate and vigorous action.

The New Yorker David Denby

Defiance, as it turns out, makes insistent emotional demands, and those who respond to it at all, as I did, are likely to go all the way and even come out of it feeling slightly stunned.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

Zwick offers excitingly staged moments, but once you get past the novelty of WWII Jews acting this heroically macho, Defiance bogs down in a not very well-developed script.

Austin Chronicle Josh Rosenblatt

Zwick may be the definition of a modern blockbuster filmmaker, but he's also spent his entire career struggling to find the balance between opposing impulses – the sentimentalist's desire for emotional-historical heft and the artist's fascination with conflicted humanity – a struggle that's all over Defiance.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

The best performance, because it's more nuanced, is by Liev Schreiber. His Zus Bielski is more concerned with the big picture, more ideological, more driven by tactics.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

For all the film's flaws, this is a war story told with passion about a band of brothers that still has the power to inspire.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

The film should've aimed higher, given all that these people endured to have their story told.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

This promising premise is turned into basically an overgrown TV movie.

USA Today Claudia Puig

The tale of the resistance movement in Belorussia is undeniably inspiring and ideally suited for a cinematic rendering. But Defiance resists bold, passionate storytelling and delivers something rather conventional.

TV Guide Jason Buchanan

A Holocaust film that's light on sentimentality but high on human drama, Defiance tells one of those remarkable survival stories that's so incredible it must be true.

Village Voice Ella Taylor

There are subtitles and vaguely East European accents; there is romance and rebirth, tears and regular pauses for gallows humor (at which we Jews are known to be very good, on account of our long history of persecution).

NPR Bob Mondello

It's an inspiring story, if one that doesn't need quite as much poetic inspiration as Ed Zwick's movie insists on giving it, with dialogue that's too often ornate and parable-inflected.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

That butting of heads, as performed by actors as strong and soulful as Craig and Schreiber, lends Defiance an emotional charge, even as the film itself struggles dramatically to find its way out of those woods.

New York Daily News Joe Neumaier

Craig, far from James Bond but still swaggering, makes a leathery, craggy commander, and Schreiber - who'll show his full-on action chops this summer in the Hugh Jackman "Wolverine" movie - is tough but sullen. Yet all this old-style moviemaking doesn't always pay off.

Empire Nev Pierce

An amazing true tale is somewhat diminished by second-hand storytelling: entirely admirable, largely entertaining, and yet curiously hollow.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

Defiance comes off as plodding and workmanlike -- and even in the midst of Zwick's too-careful machinations, it's a movie that's unsure of what it wants to be.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

Depressingly predictable in its dialogue and dramatic beats, Defiance is most interesting as a study of unlikely leaders.

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

Zwick, intent on correcting the perception of Jews as passive victims, lets the action set pieces overwhelm the more intimate scenes, several of which are already diminished by stilted dialogue.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

As a drama - an epic drama, no less, clocking in at 137 minutes - its fascination is diffused, and the movie becomes something of a long slog.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The movie leaves you in an awful tangle of amazement and disbelief: Amazement that Tuvia Bielski did turn a group of civilians into a nimble fighting force and a commune that could defend itself, but disbelief at his accomplishment's stagey and banal rendering.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

What is puzzling is how Edward Zwick has taken an extraordinary real-life story about a handful of people who defied huge odds, and turned it into an utterly conventional war movie.

Film Threat Matthew Sorrento

A little sentimentality can fuel a lot of action, yet Zwick buries his film in cloying guilt, in the end sinking Defiance with the holocaust film's bait.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

There are lots of movies about Jews suffering, dying, and surviving in Europe during World War II, but precious few about Jews fighting back. So why does everything in Defiance feel so doggedly familiar?

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Defiance has some genuine strengths but also some weaker elements, and these opposing traits battle it out kind of the way the contentious Bielskis fought not only the Germans but each other.

Variety Todd McCarthy

A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

Defiance presents itself as an explicit correction of the cultural record, a counterpoint to all those lachrymose World War II tales of helplessness and victimhood. This is a perfectly honorable intention, but the problem is that, in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity, Mr. Zwick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Clayton Frohman) ends up affirming them.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 85 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Lori W. gave it a10:
Excellent! I read the book and the movie follows along pretty closely. Wonderful story of survival and helping others! Incredible true story!!

Billy S. gave it a7:
Defiance is a good film with aspirations of being great. Craig, Schreiber and Bell are atleast believable in roles of three russian brothers who's parents are killed and seek refuge in the deep forest with hundreds of fellow Jews. The acting and especially the cinematography are excellent but I don't get the Oscar nomination for score. All in all, a much better film that Valkyrie, or Top Kraut because the Americanm and English actors all try to use accents instead of having Maverick in a Nazi uniform!

Steve K. gave it a9:
Given this was a true story, without going nuts, there are limits to the variance. So there was not enough action, the Germans were not so determined, well, that was just the luck of the situation and nature of this minor miracle. I thought the depiction of the situation and the battles was fabulously real. Ordinary people battling trained soldiers - they got their butts kicked - even if they survived they were not unrealistically portrayed as super heros. In particular Daniel Craig's part, as the leader he breaks down a few times - but fights to live. And it does nail the interpersonal relationships and the nature of survival mentality. And yes, there is the perenial 2 Jews/3 Arguments, that we all love to own. So yes, limited by the reality, but also open to the realities.

Jay B. gave it a0:
Perhaps I was overly sensitive to the Zionist message of a film at a time when Zionists were destroying the crap out of innocent lives in Gaza...Either way, this film was still also terribly over-produced, forced and predictable. I thought D. Craig and L. Schreiber were plan awful in this film! Ahhh! And to think I was anxiously awaiting this film. What a waste of money!

Clayton S. gave it an8:
I thought Defiance was a very good movie about World War II and the persecution of the Jews. I was not aware of this small group of Jewish people who fought against the Nazis. I recommend it.

Rick F. gave it a9:
This is an amazing story of survival against incredible odds. A no-nonsense group of brothers take charge after the Nazis murder virtually every Jew in the region. Those remaining are locked in Ghettos, which are in the process of being liquidated. The film explores several areas that, until now, had been badly misrepresented. For example, why didn't the Jews in the ghettos try to escape? The reason, we learn, is that for every escapee, the Nazis murdered 20 Jews. Why didn't the townfolk try harder to help the Jews? The reason, we learn, is that there was a 500 ruble bounty on every Jew they turned in, and the penalty for helping or hiding a Jew was death by hanging. Why didn't more Jews try to run to the forest? The reason, we learn, is that the Nazis overtook the area with such speed and surprise (assisted by local collaborators) that it was nearly impossible to escape. Why didn't more Jews try to survive in the forest? The reason is that the local farmers turned them in to the Nazis, and could not be trusted, and there was virtually zero food in the forest. Even the Bielski group had to starve, eat horses and dogs, and live on watery soup. In addition, they had to face sub-zero temperatures, rampant disease, lack of hygiene, lack of hope, loss of virtually every family member, and intra-group fighting and positioning for leadership. Not to mention that on at least 3 occasions, the Nazis used airplanes to drop incendiary bombs on women and children, brought in tanks to fire at elderly, women and children, had machine guns, grenades, and other advanced weapons versus a motley collection of handguns and pistols. This story is amazing, and there are at least 3 times where it is impossible not to feel emotion, and real tears, for this group of ragtag Jews fighting for their survival.

jacksfilmblog.blogspot gave it a4:
Zwick is a director with honourable intentions with an interest in telling stories about the struggles that different cultures have had to face. However, he seems to be genuinely unaware that his films always use the plights of minorities simply as a device to redeem his white heroes, and in the end there is no escaping the slightly uncomfortable image of the decidedly un-Semitic looking Daniel Craig nobly leading the helpless Jews to safety.

Defiance Paramount Vantage

Defiance
Paramount Vantage