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
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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