Awful movie

Rating: 1/10 (21 December 2011)

Looking through the reviews on this site and seeing so many people rate Defiance as a 10 out of 10 or give it a high rating truly confuses me. I almost want to sit through it again and try to find exactly what everyone saw in it that I didn't but there is nothing on this earth that could make me sit through that movie again. It was hard enough the first time, I wouldn't make it through a second viewing.
Defiance is truly one of the worse films I have seen. I went into it with an open mind, it was a movie that I really wanted to see. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed.
This movie could have been amazing, it should have been amazing but it lacks everything.
Where to start? The script was poor, horrific even. It was full of 'heroic' speeches that failed to inspire and half the time didn't have any impact at all.
The acting was mediocre. I really do like Daniel Craig but this was a poor outing for him. People have said numerous times how great he is in this movie but how is that possible when he doesn't seem to have the faintest idea where his character comes from. His accent goes from Russian, to German, to posh English every five seconds and it is really, really distracting.
All in all Liev Schreiber gives a good account of himself and is the saving grace of this movie. Unlike Craig his accent is spot on and he really adds grit to his role but is not given enough screen time to really make an impact.
The rest of the characters were dull, predictable and clichéd. The women were weak and given nothing to do apart from die, gossip about men and lay around naked with Daniel Craig. The rest looked like they walked off the set of every other WW2 movie that featured the Holocaust. There was a villain, a scholar, a wise teacher. Generally these characters added nothing to the movie at all. The only thing they seemed to do was stand around shivering eating apples. (I would love to know the amount of apples consumed during the making of this movie because at least half of the time that is all you see) Or try and be heroic and fight the Nazis by...blowing themselves up. (accidently)
Some of the cinematography was nice but far to much screen time was taken up by a close up of Daniel Craig looking either perplexed or...perplexed.
Half the time no one seemed to know what to do or what was happening and the truth of the matter is nothing much did happen at all. There was a story here but it was told poorly and was over-run with macho speeches (one off the back of a white stallion in the vain of Braveheart, add in Craigs ever changing accent and the scene is hard to take seriously)
I got the feeling that you were supposed to chose between the warring brothers (Craig & Schreiber) but the complete lack of back story makes the task impossible.
I think this film was such a waste of a good story. If it had been told properly it could have been amazing and touching instead it left me cold and bored. I couldn't wait for it to end. Some people on this site and others have said that people rate this film poorly because they 'cannot handle' the subject matter. I think this is untrue. I rate this film badly because it was awful and because the subject matter deserved so much more.