Defiance
Paramount Home Entertainment | Release Date: December 31, 2008 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
58
METASCORE
Mixed or average reviews based on 34 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
16
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
91
Seattle Post-IntelligencerWilliam Arnold
It's an exciting action spectacle and a thoughtful, cumulatively moving family drama. Read full review
88
PremiereGene Newman
The perfect antidote to the post-holiday blues. It's exciting, well-acted, touching, and genuine. Read full review
75
Christian Science MonitorPeter Rainer
It's a heroic story, and Zwick frames it rather too strenuously as an antidote to the generic Holocaust stories of Jewish passivity and martyrdom. And yet, as a piece of historical redress, a great service has been done in bringing this narrative to the screen. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
The battle scenes are well choreographed and contain enough uncertainty to make them genuinely exciting, but one would expect no less from a man who has overseen Civil War engagements (Glory) and Japanese strife (The Last Samurai). Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerCarrie Rickey
Here, Jews are not victims of genocide, but victors in the organized resistance against it. Read full review
75
Portland OregonianMarc Mohan
Remarkable, unheralded story. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie Ogle
The film isn't much of a character study; too many of its secondary characters are stereotypes, and it never fully engages our emotions the way "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist" did. Read full review
70
TimeRichard Corliss
Defiance says that it took grit, desperation and courage under fire to say, "Not this time," and fire back. Beyond that, it's a pretty good movie -- a bold, uneasy mix of romance, political debate and vigorous action. Read full review
70
The New YorkerDavid Denby
Defiance, as it turns out, makes insistent emotional demands, and those who respond to it at all, as I did, are likely to go all the way and even come out of it feeling slightly stunned. Read full review
70
Washington PostAnn Hornaday
It's impossible to watch Defiance without experiencing a vicarious thrill of resistance and revenge. Read full review
67
Entertainment WeeklyOwen Gleiberman
Zwick offers excitingly staged moments, but once you get past the novelty of WWII Jews acting this heroically macho, Defiance bogs down in a not very well-developed script. Read full review
67
Austin ChronicleJosh Rosenblatt
Zwick may be the definition of a modern blockbuster filmmaker, but he's also spent his entire career struggling to find the balance between opposing impulses – the sentimentalist's desire for emotional-historical heft and the artist's fascination with conflicted humanity – a struggle that's all over Defiance. Read full review
63
TV Guide MagazineJason Buchanan
A Holocaust film that's light on sentimentality but high on human drama, Defiance tells one of those remarkable survival stories that's so incredible it must be true. Read full review
63
USA TodayClaudia Puig
The tale of the resistance movement in Belorussia is undeniably inspiring and ideally suited for a cinematic rendering. But Defiance resists bold, passionate storytelling and delivers something rather conventional. Read full review
63
New York PostLou Lumenick
This promising premise is turned into basically an overgrown TV movie. Read full review
63
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
The best performance, because it's more nuanced, is by Liev Schreiber. His Zus Bielski is more concerned with the big picture, more ideological, more driven by tactics. Read full review
63
Rolling StonePeter Travers
For all the film's flaws, this is a war story told with passion about a band of brothers that still has the power to inspire. Read full review
63
Chicago TribuneMichael Phillips
The film should've aimed higher, given all that these people endured to have their story told. Read full review
60
The Hollywood ReporterMichael Rechtshaffen
That butting of heads, as performed by actors as strong and soulful as Craig and Schreiber, lends Defiance an emotional charge, even as the film itself struggles dramatically to find its way out of those woods. Read full review
60
NPRBob Mondello
It's an inspiring story, if one that doesn't need quite as much poetic inspiration as Ed Zwick's movie insists on giving it, with dialogue that's too often ornate and parable-inflected. Read full review
60
Village VoiceElla Taylor
There are subtitles and vaguely East European accents; there is romance and rebirth, tears and regular pauses for gallows humor (at which we Jews are known to be very good, on account of our long history of persecution). Read full review
60
New York Daily NewsJoe Neumaier
Craig, far from James Bond but still swaggering, makes a leathery, craggy commander, and Schreiber - who'll show his full-on action chops this summer in the Hugh Jackman "Wolverine" movie - is tough but sullen. Yet all this old-style moviemaking doesn't always pay off. Read full review
60
EmpireNev Pierce
An amazing true tale is somewhat diminished by second-hand storytelling: entirely admirable, largely entertaining, and yet curiously hollow. Read full review
60
SalonStephanie Zacharek
Defiance comes off as plodding and workmanlike -- and even in the midst of Zwick's too-careful machinations, it's a movie that's unsure of what it wants to be. Read full review
50
VarietyTodd McCarthy
A potentially exceptional story is told in a flatly unexceptional manner. Read full review
50
The New York TimesA.O. Scott
Defiance presents itself as an explicit correction of the cultural record, a counterpoint to all those lachrymose World War II tales of helplessness and victimhood. This is a perfectly honorable intention, but the problem is that, in setting out to overturn historical stereotypes of Jewish passivity, Mr. Zwick (who co-wrote the screenplay with Clayton Frohman) ends up affirming them. Read full review
50
Los Angeles TimesKenneth Turan
Defiance has some genuine strengths but also some weaker elements, and these opposing traits battle it out kind of the way the contentious Bielskis fought not only the Germans but each other. Read full review
50
The A.V. ClubNathan Rabin
There are lots of movies about Jews suffering, dying, and surviving in Europe during World War II, but precious few about Jews fighting back. So why does everything in Defiance feel so doggedly familiar? Read full review
50
Film ThreatMatthew Sorrento
A little sentimentality can fuel a lot of action, yet Zwick buries his film in cloying guilt, in the end sinking Defiance with the holocaust film's bait. Read full review
50
Boston GlobeTy Burr
Depressingly predictable in its dialogue and dramatic beats, Defiance is most interesting as a study of unlikely leaders. Read full review
50
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalle
As a drama - an epic drama, no less, clocking in at 137 minutes - its fascination is diffused, and the movie becomes something of a long slog. Read full review
50
Chicago ReaderAndrea Gronvall
Zwick, intent on correcting the perception of Jews as passive victims, lets the action set pieces overwhelm the more intimate scenes, several of which are already diminished by stilted dialogue. Read full review
50
Baltimore SunMichael Sragow
The movie leaves you in an awful tangle of amazement and disbelief: Amazement that Tuvia Bielski did turn a group of civilians into a nimble fighting force and a commune that could defend itself, but disbelief at his accomplishment's stagey and banal rendering. Read full review
50
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Liam Lacey
What is puzzling is how Edward Zwick has taken an extraordinary real-life story about a handful of people who defied huge odds, and turned it into an utterly conventional war movie. Read full review
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