Don't mess with us Jews. Really. Don't.

Rating: 8/10 (11 February 2009)

As I've said before, notwithstanding the unique straits of those who were rounded up in the Holocaust, we Jews have no particular innate streak of meek subservience, as this film amply proves. Even in the scene where the weakened crowd subsisting in the forest to hide from the Nazis and their henchmen kick and beat the stray German soldier to death, I realized it was right and proper, even though your first impulse is to think Tuvia Bielski (Daniel Craig), their leader, is going to step in and stop it. But he doesn't, recognizing that their murderous rage is a just revenge for the ruthless brutalization of their loved ones at the Germans' hands. I must say, I disagreed with Roger Ebert's view that Craig's character is flat while his brother's, played by Liev Schreiber, is nuanced and evolutionary--he has it exactly backwards. It is Craig who gets to play the role where the requirements of leadership impose the toughest choices--choices he often wrestles with and resists, growing more resolute and decisive only when forced to; sometimes not soon enough. Directed by Ed Zwick of "The Last Samurai," "30something" and "My So-Called Life."