..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Defiance
Directed by Ed Zwick

Ed Zwick's Defiance, based on a true-life story about Jewish partisans -- who carve out a community-in-hiding in a Belorussian forest during World War 2 -- is fairly unique among World War 2 movies, in presenting Holocaust-era Jews not as tragic victims and survivors, but as heroes and heroines who fight back and persevere against Nazis and anti-Semites.

It's well-made, in much the same vein as Zwick's Civil War epic Glory and I enjoyed it. [SPOILER ALERT] I especially enjoyed seeing Liev Schreiber, in his intensely macho performance as Zus, one of the Bielski brothers, roar to the rescue, at one point, of leader/brother Tuvia (Daniel Craig). Schreiber and Craig, both excellent here, are playing the kind of full-bore movie hero parts that, in a different kind of movie decades ago, might have gone to Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper -- and I don't mean that in a mocking way. (Nor am I talking about Vera Cruz.) Believable heroism and self-sacrifice -- even believable stubbornness, in Tuvia's case -- can be thrilling things in a movie like this, and Defiance gives both stars good roles and a strong arena, as it also does for Jamie Bell, playing Asael, the youngest brother.

Defiance has received mixed reviews. Variety's Todd McCarthy, who is usually right on the money, compared it unfavorably to the superb Belorussian sagas of Russian directors Larisa Shepitko (The Ascent) and Elem Klimov (Come and See). But that seems a little unfair. The Ascent and Come and See are two of the greatest, and most unjustly neglected, war films in movie history. Should you knock a good new newspaper movie by comparing it to Citizen Kane? Defiance is a good, and unusual, World War 2 movie, and it deserves its audience.

-by Michael Wilmington

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