Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell and Alexa Davalos star in ‘Defiance’, which is about two Jewish brothers in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe who escape into the Belorussian forests and endeavor to build a village in order to protect themselves and about 1,000 Jewish non-combatants. Check out our review of the UK Blu-ray release.
/ 5
The Feature:
Defiance is a good example of movie that has an inherent and unfortunate problem before it even gets started: It’s yet another World War 2 film. Most people would know that before buying or renting it, and there is now a certain perception that all of the best WW2 movies have already been made, which in fairness is probably partly true. But Defiance isn’t big on Nazis (they feature in maybe 4 or 5 scenes, and only one or two with dialogue) and it’s not very interested in the War dynamic in general, which is both a positive and a negative. The positive is that it presents a very interesting and engaging picture of life for a make-shift ‘community’ of Jewish people in Belorussia/Poland who flee into the vast woodland and forests in order to escape persecution from invading Nazi forces. The film finds an acceptable balance between its customary action sequences and the more interesting observations of the every day life these people struggled through, the experiences of which are based on true stories.
The negative side of spending so much time inside the dynamic of these people and their new community in the forest is that when the inevitable happens, and they are forced out of their seemingly tolerable (for a while at least) living arrangement, the action scenes are a little overblown and hit the border of becoming seriously unrealistic. After all, there are only so many times that Daniel Craig can dodge simultaneous machine gun and tank fire before such annoyances take your full attention away from what happens next. This isn’t James Bond, after all. Thankfully, the worst of this is left for the final part of the film and thus doesn’t spoil the strong beginning and middle. The first part of the film also takes on a kind of “Inglorious Bastereds” feel as Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber stalk those responsible for the murder of their family members, and it’s a little disappointing to find that this doesn’t become the basis of the entire plot in some respects, because the Bielski Brothers make quite the mean team and there would be definite potential in a storyline that concentrated on them searching out and hunting Nazis and Nazi collaborators in their homeland, ala Quentin Tarantino’s latest WW2 flick of a very similar nature.
Daniel Craig struggles at times with his accent, especially when raising his voice, and it is on one or two occasions rather distracting, but overall he brings a realistic and engaging presence to his role to perfectly counter the bruising and gruff performance from Liev Schreiber. Schreiber is impressive as the more ruthless and revenge driven of the Bielski Brothers but isn’t quite handed the opportunity to display as much range as Craig. Jamie Bell and Alexa Davalos provide decent support.
Director Edward Zwick’s film is a smooth production for better or worse, and although it features unspectacular cinematography, the film does have a realistic feeling grittiness to it and importantly for a War Time film, feels adequately realistic in it’s portrayals.
The Video, Audio and Special Features:
Viewed in 1080p, the picture is very impressive. This transfer does wonders for the dark and dank Forests by avoiding excessive grain and I noticed no visible problems apart from one under-lit scene with excessive grain, which is hardly worth mentioning and can’t really be faulted in terms of picture transfer. The fantastic quality of this picture was one of the main reasons why we recommended it as our pick of the week upon it’s initial Blu-ray release in The UK.
The Dolby Digital soundtrack was clear and sharp throughout and extremely impressive in the few loud action scenes the film features.
The UK release is sadly lacking in substantial extra features, but does have an adequate making of featurette, a mini-feature on scoring the film, another feature on the Children of the Otriad, and a gallery of photos from the production.
Verdict:
The main attraction of Defiance is the dynamic chemistry between the two leads, but overall the film is a surprisingly decent effort that successfully pulls off what ultimately feels like an original tale in a genre that most cinema lovers know very well and have seen many times before.
The Blu-ray disc itself, although lacking decent extra features, deserves a recommendation for it’s above average sound and picture quality, two essential credits for any worthwhile potential Blu-ray purchase.
