All Critics (186)
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Top Critics (37)
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Fresh (106)
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Rotten (79)
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DVD (15)
The way Zwick force-feeds his audience emotion becomes laborious.
I felt like these characters were prototypes and not people.
As a piece of historical redress, a great service has been done in bringing this narrative to the screen.
It's understandable and laudable that they desire not to sensationalize the Bielskis, and they've made a worthy film. But their understated approach makes the struggle seem less urgent than it must surely have been.
It's difficult, perhaps impossible, to make a gripping 137-minute epic about people standing around under the trees.
It is, all in all, a film as square-shouldered as its leads -- tough-minded, forcibly acted and conventionally spun by Zwick and co-writer Clayton Frohman.
Zwick does not deal in gratuitous grotesquery or far-fetched metaphor. "Operatic" and "surreal" are not in his vocabulary.
For all its pomp and ruminating, Defiance isn't really interested in drama. It really just wants to entertain us. But it's not any better at that.
Defiance is heavy-handed, but emotionally compelling, engaging and inspiring throughout.
Director Edward Zwick does a fine job presenting the challenges of reality without falling into nostalgia or easy Hollywood heroes.
succumbing to Hollywood cliches at the expense of historical truth
Un drama bélico eficaz que rescata la heroicidad de los hermanos Bielski, protagonistas de un episodio poco conocido de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.
This is not an easy film to watch, as it describes the horrors of war with neither sympathetic nor maudlin touches.
In addition to blowing bunker-sized holes in the concept of Jewish timidity during the Holocaust, it's also a darn good bit of period storytelling.
Doesn't quite live up to its great story. But this well-made, solidly conventional movie will almost certainly send you scurrying to find out more about its little-known heroes.
Defiance is overly long and somewhat disjointed, dragging through an interminable second act that seriously impedes the film's flow and hurts the inspired performances.
The tone is desaturated gravity, the action is smudged, the Old Testament parables subtle as anvils
An engaging and inspirational story about the spirit of survival, bravery and brotherhood.
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