Defiance (2008, R)

Defiance tells the incredible true story of the Bielski brothers—3 Russian Jews who, after their parents and friends are murdered by Germans, band a large Jewish resistance group together to save Jewish lives.  One of the brothers rebels against his older sibling and joins an official Soviet resistance group, accusing his brother of not being able to fight and just waiting to be hunted down and shot like animals by the Germans (the movie also follows him during his time with the Soviet partisans).  The two brothers later get in a fist fight about whose boss, but they later reconcile in the end

Defiance accurately depicts what the Germans did and how they treated Jews during World War II and the relatively unknown Bielski brothers are now shown to the public on screen (Defiance was still only a mild success at the box office).  This is what you may think of as a World War II action movie; it a story of human survival. While the movie doesn’t show what the Bielski’s did during for the rest of the war, it does shows us how they got started and such, having more Jews join them, surviving their first, cold Russian winter and fighting the Germans.  Defiance is a World War II movie that shows us something different: partisans, and, in this case, the Jewish partisans led by the Bielski brothers. 

Overall, I would call Defiance an underrated war film, and one that should be more closely looked at.        

Grade: A-