A disappointing waste of an interesting story

Rating: Null/10 (24 January 2009)

I'd heard an interesting interview w/ Zwick on NPR and thus, looked forward to this film. The reality was utterly disappointing. I couldn't believe how unconvincing and uninvolving it was. But I never was drawn into the story and few of the characters were compelling as they so easily could have been, were the script even a bit better. I watch a lot of foreign films, so I'm usually the last to say a film is boring b/c it's slow--instead, I'd say the poor script, uneven acting, and terrible casting is what did it in. I felt somehow cheated of my $10 when the credits rolled.
Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell, who are both excellent actors, did well with what they were given--in fact, I would have found Schreiber more convincing in the lead role, and it's sad that he didn't get the role due to Daniel Craig's star power being so heavily counted on for the marketing of this film. Craig was, instead, a casting mistake in more ways than one: no WAY could he pass as Schreiber's brother--I know the real Tuvia was supposed to look more white than the others, but I've seen his real photo, and not only did he resemble his brothers--he didn't look even CLOSE to Aryan!) Still, in spite of their commendable efforts to make the often-cheesy script work, the poor choice to make the Jews from Poland and Belarus speak horribly-accented English while the Russians and Germans spoke their native languages was a disaster and hurt the actors' credibility--I thought that the rule of thumb is that you choose one or the other if you don't want to make your film come off as false.
Worse, there was some spectacularly bad acting/lines--almost classic TLC/Hallmark movie stuff...i.e. cheesy choruses of "I'll go." "Me too!" I'll go." "I will also go." Or: "I have a belt." "Me too!" "I have a belt, too." "Take my belt!" The screenwriters also failed many opportunities to develop the other characters, which almost all came off as two-dimensional and sometimes even fake. All the story potential to create moving drama was wasted.
The script stalled and meandered, and failed to make us invest more in the characters. Mediocre photography also didn't help. All this without the fact that there was a ton of tinkering done with the actual historical accounts of these events. The more controversial inaccuracies aside, I still think the melodramatizing and sensationalizing of the story really was a disservice to those who actually lived through it (regardless of whether the brothers were really womanizing bullies or not). Still, it seemed disingenuous to not say "inspired by a true story" in the beginning--instead, now there a ton of people who are taking this Hollywood version as a documentary. Could go on and on, but this was so disappointing on so many levels that there's no point.