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Defiance
Paramount Vantage


4.5

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

based on 74 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 4.5 (out of 10) based on 74 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Raymond K. gave it a9:
I would have liked to have seen the whole story, which you can't do in 2 hours. Hope TV picks up the rest. This was not fiction but reality for Jews in Europe and Russia during WWII. I'm not sure today's generation has the guts to do what they did (except in their own mind).

ROBERT M. gave it a10:
My wife and I found this movie to be totally riveting; the audience of mostly 55+ Arizonans applauded at the movies conclusion. Your reviewers seem to rate on the "artistic value" of the movie. Sometimes a true story, well-told is preferred by the "lesser forms of life" out here in flyover country.

Foo Real gave it a9:
Great movie all around. The movie's score was a bit of a let down, especially when it was coming from a great composer, and the script was quite predictable. All around though, it was a very good film with a great cast and great production values

Hyper S gave it a5:
I was struggling to remain focused. 2 hours in the woods with merely 10 minutes of credible action [Yes, there was slightly more, but it was just standard tiny German patrols (snore)]. I just don't think the dialogue or the community is entertaining enough to fill the void. Plus, sometimes you're left wondering why this community of Jews was allowed to remain in the woods for years despite having been discovered by patrols, etc. Or the fact that hundreds fled a Ghetto seemingly easily into the woods, but no Germans bothered to pursue? Maybe they were busy fighting the war I suppose. The movie would have been better served venturing out of the woods once and a while to give the viewer a broader view of where this scenario was playing out and how much of a German presence was around the woods or even how big the woods were. Instead all we get is a few farms and one German radar station. 2 hours of monotonous wood scenery and some Jews walking from one spot to the other is just too much. I really can't recommend the movie as I spent the latter half hoping it would end so I could go home, but the fact that it was based on a true story makes it somewhat more intriguing to watch.

Mm Cruise gave it a10:
A Beautiful War-Movie of year ! Great performance of Daniel and perfect screenplay ... Fantastic !!!

PAul B. gave it a9:
Reminds me of a good solid war movie from the 50's and 60's - entertaining and character led. It doesn't do anything new, or different, or push the viewer - just an enjoyable war movie based on a little known subject thats not trying to be clever.

Sean P. gave it a7:
A good looking film that needed a better script in my opinion. It's not award worthy nor razzie worthy, it's simply an enjoyable film that perhaps on one or two occasions tries to be more than it is. A solid 7.

Defiance Paramount Vantage

Defiance
Paramount Vantage