Defiance (15)

Jan 20 2009 by Andrew Welsh, Perthshire Advertiser Tuesday

Rating 5/5.

BASED on Nechama Tec’s book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, director Edward Zwick’s latest offering is a dramatic and emotional tale of heroism in World War Two.

Starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell and George MacKay, Defiance is the story of four Jewish farmer brothers who escape Nazi persecution in Poland and fight back to rescue many of their kinspeople.

Zwick's reputation has been built on a series of epic films, including Glory, Legends of the Fall and The Last Samurai.

His last outing, the 2006 action adventure Blood Diamond, was set against a background of exploitation amid African war zones and earned Zwick and his team five Academy Award nominations.

Defiance follows its creator’s now trademark depiction of good versus evil, but is not afraid to meet difficult moral issues head on.

The Bielski brothers, led by Tuvia (Craig) and Zus (Schreiber), take arms after their parents are murdered, leading revenge raids on their Nazi invaders.

Faced by likely mass extermination in their home village, the brothers lead their fellow Jews into the thick Belarussian forest where the survivors attempt to create a safe haven.

A dispute over the fugitives’ relationship with Russian militia also lurking in the woods brings the two main protagonists to blows, however.

The idealistic group leader Tuvia believes that simply by living with dignity the Jews can defy the Nazis, and war itself, while the more impetuous Zus insists on the right to join the allied freedom fighters in taking more offensive action.

In one particularly memorable scene, the exiles capture a German soldier and men, women and children turn on their defenceless hostage.

Showing the ambiguity of war, the pent-up despair and grief caused by the persecuted people’s situation finally reveals itself in a horrific outpouring of hatred.

The cold winter of 1941 creates harsh and unforgiving conditions for the hidden villagers’ struggle, but still, against all odds, humanity endures.

A sub-plots involving Tuvia’s love interest Alexa, played by Lilka Ticktin, and her desire to help one of the young Jewish girls who has become pregnant creates an interesting diversion from the numerous combat scenes, which are all handled with Zwick’s usual aplomb.

As magnificent as the director’s earlier Samurai, but more focused, Defiance is like a timeless throwback to the most memorable war films of yesteryear and gives sharp-shooting Craig immeasurably more to work with than the recent James Bond non-event Quantum of Solace - even if typecasting is becoming a potential problem for him.

It lacks the humour that pervaded Blood Diamond - given the subject matter, probably no great surprise - but it is a two-hour-plus adrenalin rush with more than a few moving moments.

By pulling no punches, Zwick's inspirational tale of derring-do shows how hope can overcome the most desperate odds.