Defiance

This is a film that went straight on to my Lovefilm list when I realised I wasn't going to get the chance to see it in the cinema. It's a story that couldn't fail to be captivating - the true story of the Bielski brothers, who helped themselves and others in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. When the German army rolled through their town and the Gestapo started rounding up Jews, they fled and started anew in the forests. After the war they sought no recognition of their heroic role in saving hundreds, they simply lived out the rest of their lives in peace.

As exceptional as this story is, I had a nasty feeling that it was going to get the Hollywood treatment and that a whole load of schmaltz would be added somewhere. It's not long into the film when this theory is checked though, as Daniel Craig's character mercilessly murders a collaborator in front of his wife in his own home. There are soon further scenes of death, murder and destruction by the German army, Russian partisans and Bielski brothers' group. There are no Platoon-esque scenes of people being gloriously mown down, the deaths of a Jewish fighters are treated with no more sympathy than that of German soldiers. All the destruction and death of a war is rightly treated as horrific

I was initially interested in the film because it's about an event in the second world war about which I knew nothing, I was prepared to put up with Hollywood mangling history. Thankfully there was none of that, the only thing that got mangled was Daniel Craig’s accent - good most of the time but with a few words he clearly can't credibly say with a Russian accent.

The end of the film has a Moses / Exodus parallel which is thankfully not as cheesy it could have been, mainly because one of the characters points out that Bielski isn't Moses and that the river isn't going to part for them. In fact, the biblical references are used as a motivating factor for the Bielski's and their group, spurring them on to make good their own escape without waiting for divine intervention.

Overall a surprisingly good film.