Defiance (15)

3:02pm Friday 9th January 2009

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Stars: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell, Alexa Davalos, Allan Corduner, Mark Feuerstein, Jodhi May
Running time: 137 mins
Rating: ★★★

DIRECTOR Edward Zwick makes action movies with a conscience.

Think of Glory, a hidden chapter about an African-American regiment during the Civil War.

More recently he made Blood Diamond, about diamonds mined in African war zones and sold to finance conflicts.

This time the previously untold story is of three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland and join Russian resistance fighters in the Belarussian Forest and build a village to house the community of men, women and children.

What lets Defiance down is a script that reduces events to an old-fashioned war movie full of stereotypes and a narrative that has too many incidents and not enough time to recreate them.

It’s not bad but there’s a better film waiting to be made about the Bielski brothers.

An out-of-Bondage Daniel Craig is Tuvia, the forest fighters’ leader. Younger brother, Zus (Schreiber), is quicker to use a gun and, bent on revenge for the murder of their family, joins up with the Russian partisans.

That leaves Jamie Bell – forever destined to be billed as the youngster who played Billy Elliot on screen – as the third Bielski brother, Asael. He’s the peacemaker trying to keep the family together. The action is briskly staged. If only the dialogue was as convincing.