After their parents are killed by local police on orders from the Nazis, older brothers Tuvia (Daniel Craig) and Zus Bielski (Liev Schreiber), along with younger siblings Asael (Jamie Bell) and Aron (George Mackay), retreat to the forest near their home and plan on using their survival skills to protect themselves. Before long, they find more and more fellow Jews from their community, also hiding in the forest but barely surviving. They band together and before long, their numbers begin to grow at an alarming rate. As a partisan group going by the name The Bielski Otriad, they create a thriving community in the woods by stealing from those who can afford it, in a very Robin Hood fashion, but the Germans are determined to eradicate them.
To complicate matters, the level-headed Tuvia and the explosive Zus seem to be forever jockeying for position of leader, which causes Zus to leave the group to join the Red Army, where he faces much anti-Semitism. When a brutal air attack by the Nazis leaves The Bielski Otriad damaged and dazed, it will take all of their faith and resolve to regroup and rebuild once more.
Defiance is a really good movie. Not only is it based on a true story, but it is well acted and rousing. It is rather long, due to the plot and character development and it does lag a bit somewhere around 3/4 of the way through, but picks up again towards the end. Despite the long play time, it is still an excellent film, one well worth watching. I especially enjoyed the special features where Bielski family members talked about the brothers and their shared memories of them. There was also a photo gallery taken by Director Edward Zwick of Bielski family members, but I only wish the pictures had been labeled with who they were. There are also featurettes on the making-of showing the family members traveling back to the Bielski homeland, which was touching, plus one on the scoring of the film and commentary.
Defiance looks wonderful in high-def, especially the shots of the lush forests in the summer and the icy, snow-covered backdrops in the winter. As bombs go off, you'll feel the intensity all around you in your surround sound set-up. While you shouldn't shy away from Defiance on DVD if you don't have high-def, this is the best possible way to view the film. Overall, if you like movies about WWII and the history of those who battled the Nazis, you'll enjoy Defiance.
