Synopsis:
In WWII, three Jewish brothers escape from Nazi-occupied Poland and hide in the Belorussian forests, where they join Russian resistance fighters and help to build a village to protect themselves and others. Based on a true story.
Our Thoughts:
Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell team up for the upcoming movie Defiance - and to say we are under-impressed would be an understatement.
Daniel Craig, who in our book ties with Timothy Dalton for the worst James Bond ever, didn’t impress us recently in Golden Compass (2007), so chances are he’s going to again fail to impress us in Defiance - and this time he has a much bigger role.
He tries to adopt a Polish accent this time around - yet even in the previews you can hear what sounds to be some British accent coming through in some of his dialogue (mostly near the end of the preview). Not a good sign.
Then there’s Liev Schreiber, who isn’t one of our favorites either. Sure, he wasn’t bad in his robot-like normal state in The Manchurian Candidate, but who could stand him in the horrendous Omen (2006)? Two down.
Jamie Bell. Well, he’s an unknown to us as we haven’t yet seen Flags Of Our Fathers or Jumper (2008) - and we don’t remember him at all in Peter Jackson’s King Kong.
The story sounds interesting, but after Schindler’s List, can anything else really compare positively to that era? It’s going to be tough, that’s for sure.
The human angle (1,200 Jews saved by 3 brothers!) is tempting, but with Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber in the driver’s seat, chances are we’re going to pass on this one during it’s theatrical run.
We may eventually pick it up on DVD, but even there it’s not going to be at the top of our list.
