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Viewers who know their Bible will get more out of Edward Zwick's Defiance | Sam Thielman

Grosvenor Park Productions

Very little stings the ears like Rudolf Hess' horrifying 1934 Nuremberg rally speech, but that's the sound that Edward Zwick has chosen to open his new movie. "Hitler is Germany!" Hess screams in his native tongue, "Just as Germany is Hitler!"

If this veneration of the Führer seems sickening today, imagine the fear of Polish Jews remembering this footage as tanks rolled across their border from the Germany he controlled, or, as Hess would have it, embodied. Atop a recently murdered Jewish man, then, is the only fitting place for the film's title: Defiance.

Zwick's film follows three Polish farmers—adult brothers named Tuvia (Daniel Craig, looking exactly like Steve McQueen), Zus (the marvelous Liev Schreiber), and Asael Bielski (a surprisingly strong Jamie Bell)—as they flee into the Naliboki forest after the Germans take over their town of Stankiewicze, killing their parents.