Defiance

From Nechama Tec’s book, the true-story-based drama of three Jewish brothers (Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell) who mobilized a small militia of their own people in Nazi-occupied Belarus in 1941. Just watch how earnestly they endured both their own infighting and dubious assistance from the Russian army—not to mention the banal characterizations, tin-eared dialogue and war-movie action clichés cooked up by Clayton Frohman and director Edward Zwick, who co-wrote the script. Here Zwick’s saggy direction isn’t good for much more than composing shots of the wintry European woods, and therefore undermines the movie’s needed urgency. The actors’ way of reveling in their stagey gestures, sooty makeup and silly accents becomes increasingly pitiable. Not recommended for sufferers of Holocaust-movie-fatigue.