Synopsis
Based on a true story, during World War II, four Jewish brothers escape their Nazi-occupied homeland of West Belarus in Poland and join the Soviet partisans to combat the Nazis. The brothers begin the rescue of roughly 1,200 Jews still trapped in the ghettos of Poland.
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Cast
- Daniel CraigTuvia Bielski
- Liev SchreiberZus Bielski
- Jamie BellAsael Bielski
- Alexa DavalosLilka Ticktin
- Allan CordunerShimon Haretz
- Mark FeuersteinIsaac Malbin
- Tomas AranaBen Zion Gulkowitz
- Jodhi MayTamara Skidelsky
- Kate FahyRiva Reich
- Iddo GoldbergYitzhak Shulman
Recommendations
- 88
Premiere
The perfect antidote to the post-holiday blues. It's exciting, well-acted, touching, and genuine. - 75
ReelViews
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). - 63
TV Guide Magazine
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. - 63
USA Today
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. - 60
The Hollywood Reporter
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. - 60
NPR
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. - 60
Village Voice
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). - 50
Variety
A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner.
