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In an Oscar season, like any other, chock full of Holocaust movies, where does one start? With Tom “Patches” Cruise and his failed comeback vehicle Valkyrie? With Kinslet Winslet’s award-baiting oldface in The Reader? With the heartbreaking friendship of two children on different sides of the war in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas? Or perhaps with the two other new Holocaust films -- Good and Adam Resurrected -- that opened last week?
Well, if you’re really masochistic, you see them all. But if you’d like to get a taste of each and leave the theater relatively unscathed and unattached, then see Defiance. Starring Daniel Craig (above right), Liev Schreiber (above left), and a surprisingly dreamy Jamie Bell (above center), the film follows a group of Jews in occupied Poland escaping into the Belarusian forests and wreaking havoc on any Nazis that cross their paths.
Led by the Bielski brothers (Schreiber and Craig), the downtrodden group must keep their whereabouts hidden and their morale high despite the quickening winter, lest they succumb to starvation and infighting. Based on a true story (with some major embellishments), Defiance’s broad set-up has all the awards potential of its most formidable compatriots.
In terms of storytelling, though, it’s a bit schizophrenic -- like a messy smorgasbord of big-budget action movie clichés, but framed by the Holocaust. There’s revenge, sorrow, brotherhood, religion, love (and lust!), shoot-outs, fistfights, shotguns, tanks, Jewish weddings, Daniel Craig(!) -- and it all moves from one maudlin speech to the next with no rhyme or reason! It’s overdone, to say the least. But compared to the other Holocaust films currently vying for box office bucks, Defiance is also kitschy. Its heavy-handedness strikes me as unintentional satire -- an unabashed Hollywood blowout amidst the grave, overwrought Holocaust movie season of this year. In this respect, I'll award Defiance an upgrade for its timeliness from bad to awesomely bad.
-- MIKE BERLIN
Previously > Loosening up our (Benjamin) buttons
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