Movie Review - 'Defiance'

Defiance Starring Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell Directed by Edward Zwick Rated R

Between 1941 and 1944, Tuvia Bielski and his brothers built the largest single civilian resistance movement against the Nazis, protecting some 1,200 Jews in the forests of Belarus. The story is so remarkable that a movie can hardly do it justice. Because the film has a little over two hours to prove its case, you can only get an approximation of how the Bielski partisans survived, but it's impossible to really absorb just how this all came together against unbelievable odds. That is not a criticism of Defiance in any way, but a realization of just how unique this journey is. Director Edward Zwick (The Last Samurai) has chosen to focus primarily on the lives of the three Bielski brothers, Tuvia (Daniel Craig), Zus (Liev Schreiber), and Asael (Jamie Bell), as men who initially wanted to save themselves from the Nazis but wound up – directly or indirectly - saving thousands of lives and aiding the Russian army against Germany at a crucial time in the war. Initially, the Bielskis were doing what anyone in their situation would do. They fled. Knowing what the German army was up to, the only place you couldn't be found easily was in the woods, so the Bielskis wound up at the same place, although they arrived separately. Soon, they were joined by dozens of people they didn't know, all looking for shelter, safety, heat, and food, four things not easy to find in the Belarusian woods in the winter. Slowly, however, the group of refugees began building a life while waiting for the end of the Nazi insanity. There were skirmishes, and when there were, the Bielski partisans would have to become nomads, finding a new place to settle, hidden from the rest of the world.

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Box Office - 'Marley' Hits $100 Million, Wins Again

I'll be curious to see what happens next for the top four movies of the week. For the second straight week, Marley & Me won the box office, with Bedtime Stories, Benjamin Button, and Valkyrie filling out the rest of the top four. With no new competition this week, the films were able to put up pretty strong numbers, with Marley & Me topping $100 million in ten day and earning another $24 million over the New Year's weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

In fact, all four of last week's new releases are primed to make $100 million, as Valkyrie has already made $60 million and will be close to $75 or $80 million in another week to ten days. But I'm curious because there is competition coming; there are 14 wide releases hitting theaters within the next three weeks. It's not so much the quality of the competition - it is early January, after all - but the sheer numbers of movies that could make a movie like Bedtime Stories fade sooner than it normally would. We'll have expansions by several Oscar movies, including Gran Torino, The Reader, and the re-released Dark Knight, as well as horror movies The Unborn and My Bloody Valentine that are being aggressively promoted. Speaking of Oscar movies, they constituted nine of the top ten finishers this weekend on a per-screen basis. Defiance led the way with a whopping $60,000 per screen, about ten times as much as Marley. Gran Torino looks like it's on its way to being a huge hit; the Clint Eastwood film has made just under $10 million in four weeks...in a total of 84 theaters.

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Go Behind the Scenes of 'Defiance'

The machinations of Paramount have kind of hindered the upcoming Defiance in the push for awards, although the film has received a qualifying run and it will be in some theaters beginning December 31st. I don't really blame Paramount; the environment almost dictates that you have to pick your battles for awards, and for Paramount, that means all Benjamin Button, all the time. But Defiance is certainly nothing to sneeze at, and in fact, it wound up on the National Board of Review's year-end list of the ten best films. It's the story of three Belarusian Jewish brothers ( Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, and Jamie Bell) who help lead the largest armed rescue mission of Jews during the Holocaust. It's a fascinating story and director Edward Zwick has managed to give us not only a lot to think about, but has done so in a fairly mainstream, entertaining way, mining some great performances and keeping the action moving. Here are a couple looks behind the scenes of Defiance, courtesy of Movieweb. We've got a really detailed featurette for you first and then a junket interview with Daniel Craig:

'The Road' Likely Out of the Running for 2008 Awards

Just when it seemed as though the awards contenders were lining up, three possible nominees have been moved around...in the last two days! Let's begin with the most crushing blow to the awards season, the removal of The Road from the 2008 schedule.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men), The Road stars Viggo Mortensen as a man going cross-country with his son after an apocalyptic event. It was supposed to be released in mid-November, following a path similar to No Country, but the film is reportedly "decidedly" not ready for release. The news gets worse: The Weinstein Company, hedging its bets that The Road won't be in shape for any kind of awards run this year, has moved Stephen Daldry's The Reader up to early December to fill its slot in the company's big end-of-the-year push.That's really sad. I know that a lot of people were really looking forward to The Road, and I can't imagine what would delay it so much in post-production, unless test results were just that negative. I don't know that to be the case, but I'm troubled by the possibility.

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Trailer - Daniel Craig in 'Defiance'

Is it possible to be taken really, really seriously as an actor while portraying James Bond? I think you'd have to say that Daniel Craig comes the closest of any Bond to further legitimizing himself through other roles. And less than two months after Quantum of Solace, we'll see a whole other side of Craig in Defiance.He plays one of three Jewish brothers (along with Liev Schrieber and Jamie Bell) who escapes the Nazis and takes refuge in the Belarusian forest where Russian resistance fighters have set up a village for other escapees.But the brothers want to take the fight to Hitler's troops, as you'll see in this terrific new trailer:
Trailer courtesy of Variety Defiance will get a limited release in time for awards consideration beginning December 12th, but Paramount will platform it around the country in wider release after that.