Defiance (2008) Critic Reviews

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

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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).Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review

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.Read the full review