"Our revenge is to live."

Rating: 8/10 (12 June 2019)

Based on real events, this is the story of the Bielski Brothers of Poland during the 1941, German occupation of Belorussia, a time during which fifty thousand Jews were murdered and a million more awaited deportation or death. Tuvia (Daniel Craig) is a thoughtful, pragmatic leader while his brother Zus (Liev Schreiber) is more prone to physical action and fighting the enemy directly. This causes some discord between the two when Zus leads a small band of Jewish fighters to join forces with the Russian Red Army against the Nazi forces. Tuvia is left to contend with a daily growing camp of refugees fleeing their former homes and attempting to find safety and a new life in the unforgiving forests of Poland/Belorussia. A particularly compelling sequence involves Tuvia leading the refugees to safety across a huge expanse of swampy wasteland; the parallels to Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egypt while parting the Red Sea comes to mind. One will be inspired by the perseverance and resolve of the indigents who look to the Bielski's for courage and guidance, as the story demonstrates how important it was for just a handful of men to believe in an almost impossible goal. With great hardship and not without it's fatalities, the roughly twelve hundred survivors held on long enough to witness the end of the Nazi regime and gain the freedom they all longed for.