Review: "Human Capital"

"Human Capital" is a tale of leverage -- the invisible lines of influence and control we all have exerted upon us by others, and in turn use to manipulate people to our ends. It's a story of weaklings and bullies, lovers and enemies, and how quickly these roles can shift.

In an unnamed New York City wealthy suburb, two families are loosely joined by their children. Liev Schreiber is Drew, a middle-aged real estate broker looking for a piece of the better life. His teen daughter, Shannon (Maya Hawke), is dating Jamie (Fred Hechinger), the son of a major hedge fund tycoon. As the story opens, Drew offers to drop Shannon off at her boyfriend's house, but he has ulterior motives.

Peter Sarsgaard plays Quint Manning, the other father, with a pitch-perfect mix of arrogance and dismissive contempt. He invites Drew to play tennis with him, and he already seems to know it's a set-up to ask about investing in his hot new venture. It's a casual sort of neighborly corruption.

To Quint, everything and every person has a price tag on them.

Drew borrows the $300,000 to get in on the hedge fund (at the lowest "friends and family" entry) and falsifies his financial paperwork. Meanwhile, his younger wife Ronnie (Betty Gabriel), an idealistic therapist, has just learned she is pregnant. Drew, who used to have a problem with gambling, embraces the possibilities while pushing down the fear about the consequences -- especially when the deal starts to go south.

An accident on the road happens -- a car sideswipes a cyclist in the middle of the night, then drives on. Who was driving? What happened to the man on the bicycle? Will anyone be held to account in this world where seemingly sings go punished?

The story, based on the novel by Stephen Amidon and adapted by Oren Moverman, keeps shifting perspectives and gears on us. We think it'll be Drew's story, but then the movie rewinds and we see some of the same things from another point of view, and then another. It all builds to a confrontation that is inevitable but still remains surprising.

Director Marc Meyers ("My Friend Dahmer") keeps the pieces of the puzzle constantly moving, introducing new ones and setting aside others we thought would be pivotal. The novel was previously adapted into an Italian movie of the same name.

Marisa Tomei plays Carrie, Quint's wife and Jamie's mother, a kept woman who enjoys her immense privilege. Drew first spots her through a window in the opening scene, and we suspect they might have a romantic liaison. But their first meeting is awkward and off-putting, and seems to close the door on that.

Carrie has an idea to buy and restore a magnificent cinema in the nearby city, and Quint is content to indulge his wife's latest whim. She forms a board and sets about with the project, and dallies with her hand-picked artistic director (Paul Sparks), a professor who is as mesmerized by her as Quint is with his money.

The story turns again to Shannon, who mutually splits with Jamie while maintaining the pretense of their continued relationship in order to appease their parents. She is intrigued by Ian (an excellent Alex Wolff), one of Ronnie's patients who is a minor local celebrity for his drug-dealing. Shannon takes up with the dour young man, at first to fracture her goody-goody image but then for deeper reasons.

Ian tells her upfront that he is a broken person, and even seductively vows that he will never love her. But we'll see.

Things go from there. Even with its "Roshomon"-like structure, "Human Capital" is less interested in the twists of the storyline than the impact they have on the very human figures caught in the web of intrigue.

The cast is pretty uniformly terrific, with Hawke and Wolff standing out in particular. Their star-crossed relationship is the beating heart of the movie, the real romance hiding behind a fake one.

We all tell lies, and are lied to. It's one thing to betray another but quite another to be dishonest with yourself. Here's a tense, observant film that explores the authenticity of our own hearts.

Review: "Chuck"

Chuck Wepner was a big ugly mook who became semi-famous as a footnote in both the sports and entertainment worlds. You may not think you know me, he narrates at the beginning of his biopic, “Chuck,” but you do.

It’s long been said that Muhammad Ali and his manager, Don King, picked the New Jersey boxer out of obscurity in 1975 as his next opponent after downing George Foreman in “The Rumble in the Jungle” because they wanted a white opponent. But as this enlightening new film directed by Philippe Falardeau (“Monsieur Lazhar”) and starring Liev Schreiber shows, Wepner may have been a blue-collar club fighter, but he was hardly a nobody.

Wepner was the eighth-ranked heavyweight fighter at the time, a 6-foot-5-inch brawler known for his uncanny ability to take punch and not go down. “The Bayonne Bleeder,” they called him, a nickname Chuck detested but accepted when it bought him a round of free drinks or a salutation on the street.

As skillfully depicted by Schreiber, Chuck is somebody who revels in the affirmation of others. He carouses his little corner of Jersey, puffed up by locals who call him “The Champ,” accepting overtures from women not because he’s a philandering cad at heart but because he’s almost genetically incapable of not returning any affection shown to him.

He’s the man who bleeds -- from his face, prodigiously, but also his heart.

Liev, an elegantly handsome actor, is surprisingly convincing as Wepner, with his permanently swollen features, arched eyebrows and fu Manchu mustache. His face resembles last night’s hamburger. Mostly, he seems like a guy trying desperately not to embarrass himself.

The story -- screenplay by Jeff Feuerzeig, Jerry Stahl, Michael Cristofer and Schreiber -- actually wraps up the Ali fight about a third of the way through. Chuck never harbored any illusions about beating possibly the greatest of all time -- he was already 36 and losing a step -- but was determined to go the full 15 rounds to prove the naysayers wrong.

Instead, the rest of the movie focuses on Chuck’s life after, when he coasted on his bit of celebrity as the nobody who stood toe-to-toe with the champ. (Pooch Hall plays Ali.)

Then, of course, “Rocky” happened.

The similarities between Sylvester Stallone’s breakout movie and Wepner’s real life are too close to pass the credulity test that Sly made it up on his own. In the film’s version of events, Chuck saw the movie winning a boatload of box office and a trove of Academy Awards as his own victory, too.

But he was too embarrassed to tell anyone, even his best friend, John (a fine Jim Gaffigan), that he wasn’t paid a dime for his story. Eventually, though, pride gets the better of him and he reaches out to Stallone (Morgan Spector), and a surprising connection forms.

One of the film’s disappointments is it completely sidesteps the legal wrangles and war of words between Stallone and Wepner, which went on for decades after “Rocky” came out. In some ways, “Chuck” takes too many pains not to make anybody look bad.

The movie gets the look and feel of 1970s Jersey right -- the loud clothes, the big Cadillacs, the dim bars.

Wepner’s relationship with his wife, Phyllis (Elisabeth Moss), follows the familiar up-and-down tropes of cinematic married couples, and we can’t wait for the marriage to end fast enough. Chuck runs into Linda (Naomi Watts), a hard-scoured bartender, who continually puts him off. But there’s something there, so we’re not surprised when she keeps turning up.

I also liked Ron Perlman as Al, Chuck’s manager and cut-man. Al uses Wepner as a piece of meat he could stitch up and put out there, just trying to get through the next round and the next fight, but genuinely cared about the man underneath the scar tissue. When his boxing career is clearly over, Al sets up a bout with wrestling star Andre the Giant to keep the money and the attention flowing.

“Chuck” stands out from a pantheon of boxing movies, the story of a guy who wasn’t the most skilled fighter or possessed of drive far above his talent level. Wepner was a guy who stumbled into and out of trouble, became famous almost by accident and struggled with that, too. Chuck always took his lumps, and endured.

Video review: "The 5th Wave"

It’s funny how in young adult novels and their movie adaptations, young adults are always the key to saving the world.

In real-life it’s pretty rare for a teen to have a momentous impact on history -- Joan of Arc, King Tut… not many others.

Oh, well. It’s a central conceit of much popular storytelling that the audience sees themselves in the main character -- so why not tailor the character to them?

Here it’s Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie, an unremarkable kid in a normal town when alien invaders swoop in and take over. They do so slowly, in stages, targeting humanity’s technology, environment, etc. in succession. The fifth and final wave is infiltration of human hosts by the invaders’ control.

There’s a lot of similarity to both “The Hunger Games” and “Divergent” franchises. The female lead is indoctrinated into a militaristic existence in which young people are expected to fight and die for the cause. And, exhaustingly, there are multiple cute boys wandering into the tale to tempt and/or betray our heroine.

Here they are Ben (Nick Robinson), a classmate Cassie was sweet on, and Evan (Alex Roe), a somewhat mysterious country boy she stumbles upon after all the youngsters are rounded up by the U.S. Army, conveniently leaving her behind.

There follows some gun fights, hand-to-hand action in which our formerly mousy protagonist suddenly becomes a badass, etc. There are a couple of large plot twists, which will only seem surprising if you haven’t been paying any attention.

“The 5th Wave” isn’t bad, but after a dozen or more of these YA movies it’s hard to enjoy something when you see everything coming.

Bonus features are pretty good. The DVD comes with a feature-length commentary track with Moretz and director J Blakeson and two making-of featurettes: “Inside The 5th Wave” and “Sammy on the Set.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray and you add three more featurettes -- “The 5th Wave Survival Guide,” “Training Squad 53” and “Creating a New World” -- plus deleted scenes and a gag reel.

Movie:

Extras: 

Review: "The 5th Wave"

I think we all know the essential ingredients of these science fiction young adult book-to-film adaptions by now:

• Post-apocalyptic dystopia
• Female protagonist who's "not special" but is really the Chosen One
• Teen (and younger) recruits inducted into military-style training and combat
• Smirking adult overlord pulling the strings
• Supernatural abilities/challenges
• An inordinate number of dreamy boys wandering about

"The 5th Wave" isn't the worst of these, nor is it the best, but it suffers from following three "Hunger Games," and two "Divergent" movies. Not to mention five "Twilight" flicks, which eschew the apocalypse but tick everything else off the list. Or two "Maze Runner" movies, which simply swap out the gender of the main character.

It's dragged down by a glum sameness, and the sense that it's a cut-rate knockoff.

Genre pictures tend to be formulaic, but these YA sci-fi movies literally seem to be built on an identical formula from which filmmakers seem afraid to diverge.

In all of them, though, what's constant is that young people hold the key to the world's salvation. And that love will find a way to insert itself into the proceedings, whether it belongs there or not.

Chloë Grace Moretz, one of the most interesting film actors under age 20, plays Cassie Sullivan, a self-described ordinary kid in an ordinary town. Then a giant alien spaceship appears over the Earth one day, uncommunicative and mysterious. The intentions of "The Others" -- really original name, idn't it? -- are soon made clear by a series of attacks aimed at wiping out humans while preserving the planet.

First an electromagnetic pulse takes out all our tech. Then rising waters flood the cities near the coast or major lakes. Then a super version of avian flu. And so on, until not that many people are left, struggling to survive -- and competing to do it. A shocking opening scene shows Cassie blowing away a wounded guy.

"How do you rid the world of humans? First your rid the humans of their humanity," she narrates.

The fifth and final wave is the most devious: the Others, which are described as bug-like parasites, infiltrate human hosts and send them out to kill remaining survivors.

Luckily, the Army has finally gotten its act together and come to the rescue. They arrive at the refugee camp where Cassie and her family are living, with promises of shelter, protection and training for the final fight to come. It seems kids make the best recruits because it's easier to detect whether they've been infected than adults.

Maria Bellow plays a hardcase sergeant with a deathly pallor who shows the youngsters the ugly face of the enemy. The commander is the stern but charismatic Colonel Vosch (Liev Schreiber). Cassie herself gets left behind during the roundup, but her young brother Sammy (Zackary Arthur) is taken. She's determined to be reunited with him but there are... setbacks.

Nick Robinson plays Ben Parish, who was Cassie's big crush back in high school before the Others came. Now he's selected as squadron leader, though he butts heads with headstrong emo ragegirl Ringer (Maika Monroe).

Meanwhile, Cassie is wounded and nursed back to health by Evan Walker (Alex Roe), whose dimples blow away even Ben's. He's living in the woods by himself, but has some secrets for Cassie to discover.

There's a big twist about two-thirds of the way through the film, which I guessed pretty early in the going, and you probably will, too. Also a somewhat smaller twist... which is also telegraphed in a major way.

Director J Blakeson -- that's sic; he's too cool for punctuation, apparently -- and a trio of screenwriters keep things moving at a brisk pace, and manage to present reasonably distinct characters. Moretz is the strong point, able to reflects aspects of vulnerability and determination without seeming like a two-dimensional movie construct.

The kissy stuff is just death, though, interrupting the plot just as it's getting into third gear.

I haven't read the novel by Rick Yancey upon which it was based, but it's no surprise that it is a trilogy like its YA sci-fi brethren. So that means if you're looking for a satisfying conclusion to this story, we're just getting rolling here.

Assuming, that is, "The 5th Wave" does well enough to recoup its $38 million budget -- about half that of the first "Hunger Games" and "Divergent" movies -- and post a reasonable profit. Which isn't a sure thing: just in the past three years cinematic adaptations of "Mortal Instruments," "The Host" and "The Giver" all had modest-to-weak debuts that doomed the chance of sequels.

Based on this movie, I'd put the chances of a 6th wave at 50/50 at best.

Review: "Spotlight"

“Spotlight” is the truest depiction of journalism since… well, ever.

Even “All the President’s Men,” “Network” and “Broadcast News” -- great movies though they are -- contained a certain quotient of Hollywood BS. Here is the new standard in cinematic depictions of the journalists, along with one of the best films of the year.

This new drama depicting the Boston Globe’s discovery of a massive cover-up of sexually abusive priests never skimps on the facts, or sexes up the individual reporters and editors, or creates composite characters to skirt over the unsavory aspects of some of the real ones.

Why? Because it never has to. The real thing is compelling enough and needs no sprinkling of fictional fairy dust.

Directed by Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent,” “Up”), who also co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Singer, “Spotlight” is a great story about the making of a great and tragic story.

McCarthy knows a little about newspapering, since he played an ethically untethered reporter in the last season of the great HBO television series, “The Wire.” Having portrayed the worst of the profession, he now shows us the best.

Unless you’ve had your head in a hole, you know where the long tail of the priest molestation story eventually went: widespread sexual abuse by clergy and a coordinated effort by the Catholic Church, nationally and internationally, to cover it up rather than end it. Even the Pope personally apologized.

Here is how the shroud first began to fall.

The most realistic thing about the movie is that it shows how big stories are rarely uncovered by a single person who has the information fall into their lap. It’s almost always a group effort, it takes weeks and months and years of arduous work, and at some point in the investigative process someone will realize they already had the information they needed all along, right under their noses. But it either got swept under the rug or ignored in the rush of daily publishing.

The heroes here are the four-member team of Spotlight, the investigative project unit at the Globe. As the story opens in 2001 a new editor is arriving at the paper, an out-of-towner named Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), who knows nothing of predominantly Catholic Boston and is an unmarried Jew, to boot. He’s given warm handshakes and cockeyed glances, both outside the newsroom and within.

Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) is the editor of the Spotlight, a self-described “player/coach” who doesn’t just sit in his office and circle misspellings. He’s a man of the town, went to the high school across the street from the Globe. He acts as the glad-hander and bridge to the city’s bastions of respectability -- who are hiding vile secrets.

Mark Ruffalo plays Michael Rezendes, the quintessential dogged reporter who seems to have little in his life beyond his phone and notebook. Rachel McAdams is Sacha Pfeiffer, who has a knack for getting people to talk, especially victims of sexual abuse. John Slattery plays Ben Bradlee Jr., the skeptical metro editor, and Brian d’Arcy James is Matt Carroll, the “glue guy” who eventually discovers that some of the accused priests have been living down the street from his family.

Stanley Tucci shines as Mitchel Garabedian, a cantankerous attorney suing the Church on behalf of dozens of victims, who is slow to be recruited to help the intrepid reporters. He’s fought many battles and lost. “I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid. I’m experienced,” he intones. Also solid are Jamey Sheridan and Billy Crudup as conflicted lawyers and go-betweens.

The film nails, absolutely nails, the rhythms and culture inside a metro newspaper -- the petty rivalries, the built-in curiosity about everything, the caustic humor, the deep-seated belief that whatever you’re working on is the most important story in the world. All the little background details are there, from the men’s cheap short-sleeved shirts and ties to the hurried junk food, constant scribbling of notes and long nights away from family. (And how the librarians are the unsung heroes of every newsroom.)

It shows how journalists get reluctant people to talk, through appeals to better nature and sheer persistence, since they have no real power other than the threat of telling the truth. “You want to be on the right side of this,” they say, more than once.

The story of mass abuse of children by priests is one of immense importance, but even it is fleeting in comparison to the story of journalism itself. It’s been called the first draft of history, but what reporting most essentially represents is the intrinsic need to ask questions -- to inquire of our communities, our wielders of power, of ourselves.

“Spotlight” is the triumphant depiction of one of mankind’s noblest instincts.

Review: "Salt"

"Salt" could've been like a hundred other super-spy movies, except for three things: Angelina Jolie, Phillip Noyce and Kurt Wimmer.

You may have already heard that this thriller originally was supposed to be about a male character, until someone had the idea to cast Jolie in the lead. As an American CIA agent suspected of being a turncoat for the Russians, Jolie exploits the duality of her star persona -- fringe rebel/U.N. goodwill ambassador, man-stealing harpy/loving mother.

Like the shifting tabloid portrayal of Jolie, we never quite know exactly who Evelyn Salt is, but we find ourselves identifying with her and instinctually cheering her on as she wades through elite security forces like a hot knife through butter.

Lacking clear loyalties, her sheer dangerousness becomes her identity.

There's a great scene early on where Salt, on the lam from her American colleagues, quickly changes her appearance. She pulls out a false dental front, removes colored contacts, and dyes her flowing blonde locks obsidian. Then we realize she's not putting on a disguise, but removing one.

Director Noyce is an old hand at cloak-and-dagger material ("Patriot Games," "The Quiet American") and again shows a confident expertise at keeping the audience misdirected. He keeps the plot moving at breakneck speed, and then slows up just enough to reveal that everything you've seen may not be what it seems.

One day a crusty old Russian agent (Daniel Olbrychski) wanders into Rink Petroleum, a front for the CIA, and announces that during the Cold War days, hundreds of children were raised to be deep-cover moles spread throughout the corridors of power in the West.

On a fateful Day X, the best of those double agents will assassinate the Russian president, setting off a nuclear confrontation between the former enemies, now wary allies.

That agent's name: Evelyn Salt.

Salt's longtime partner, Ted Winter (Liev Schreiber), doesn't believe this wild story and wants to give her a chance to defend herself. But Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the counter-terrorism boss, is a by-the-book man and demands Salt be put in lockdown. While the spooks are distracted by other events, Salt makes good on her escape, demonstrating incredible daring and ingenuity in the process.

At this point, Wimmer's original screenplay -- yes, they really do still exist -- becomes one big game of chase-chase. Except we never know if Salt is running away from the American authorities or toward some other, possibly nefarious goal.

Wimmer plays with the audience's expectations cunningly. We keep hoping Salt will reveal herself as a white knight caught in very bad circumstances. And then she does a really bad thing from which there would appear to be no going back.

As soon as you think you've got the convoluted knot of intrigue puzzled out, another sharp turn sends you deeper into the labyrinth.

Jolie is a convincing action star as she punches, kicks, shoots and otherwise dispatches her entirely male adversaries. In this age of hyper-quick editing of disembodied appendages impersonating hand-to-hand combat, Noyce proves a delightful throwback in actually depicting who did what. It grounds the action in reality, which gives it an authenticity MTV editing never will.

Clever, fast-paced and filled with neck-wrenching twists, "Salt" adds plenty of spice to a tired spy genre.

3.5 stars out of four

DVD review: "X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine" was doomed before they even started filming.

Not because audiences didn't want to see a spin-off about most popular character from the "X-Men" movies. Comic book fans were hungry for a story on the further adventures of the wayward mutant hero with metal claws and a healing ability that makes him unkillable -- preferably one they're already familiar with from the character's long history. (Japan, anyone?)

Instead, director Gavin Hood and his team delve into the character's origin story, which turns out to be one long Cain and Abel saga in which Wolverine and his similarly clawed brother Victor Creed (Liev Schreiber) play out their sibling rivalry in a seemingly endless series of stabby tussles.

Face it: Wolverine was more intriguing as a mystery man. The minute they tried to burden him with a past, he diminished as a character.

The DVD comes with a good set of extras, including two separate feature commentaries, one by Hood and the other by producers Brian Winter and Lauren Shuler Donner. Each are entertaining without covering much new ground.

Wolverine's comic book creators, Stan Lee and Len Wein, trade amusing banter in a 16-minute featurette in which Lee reveals that he considered the X-Men the runt of his litter of other comic titles such as "Thor" and "The Fantastic Four."

In "Wolverine Unleashed," a 12-minute making-of doc, star Hugh Jackman says his disturbingly veiny physique -- which he spent months sculpting with a special diet and training regimen -- was intended to make the character appear "freaky." "I wanted it to look animal," he says.

There are also four deleted/alternate scenes, including a variation on a critical scene leading up to the final showdown with Victor, in which Wolverine agrees to have his memories erased.

While straining credulity, this explanation for his memory loss is superior to the laughable moment in the final film, in which Wolverine is shot in the head with bullets made from the same indestructible metal in his skeleton. At least they weren't silver.

Movie: 2 stars
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Taking Woodstock"

I liked everything about "Taking Woodstock" except for the concert itself. Or rather, I liked the movie up until the point the music started playing.

And that's because we already know pretty much everything there is to know about the iconic "3 Days of Peace & Music" from 1969 -- the acid trips, the rolling hills filled with people sleeping and grooving, the casual nudity, playing in the mud, etc. It is literally not possible to have lived in America over the past 40 years without being inundated with these images.

What is interesting and new are the events leading up to Woodstock, which are depicted by director Ang Lee ("Brokeback Mountain") in a fresh and vibrant manner. They deal with the tiny New York town of White Lake, which suddenly found itself host to the biggest rock concert in history. Most of the townsfolk are not happy about it, and blame the two local men responsible for bringing it there.

You may have heard of one of them, Max Yasgur, the unassuming dairy farmer (played by Eugene Levy) who hosted the Woodstock concert on his land. But many people (including me) didn't know the story of Elliot Tiber (renamed Teichberg for the film), who ran a tiny motel with his parents and played perhaps the most pivotal role in the concert happening in White Lake, or anywhere.

As played by Demetri Martin, Elliot is a timid, closeted gay youngster who lives in the Big Apple but spends most of his time helping his aged parents (Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman) run the equally decrepit El Monaco Motel. As president of the tiny local chamber of commerce, Elliot is perpetually dreaming up ways to promote the El Monaco, including an annual chamber music festival and using his barn to play host to a troupe of starving thespians with a penchant for doffing their clothes.

When Elliot gets wind that a major rock festival has been killed by the neighboring town of Wallkill, he contacts the Woodstock organizers and pitches the El Monaco to them. They reject it as too small, but make a deal with Yasgur. Soon organizers and construction guys are arriving by the dozen.

I enjoyed these scenes because they make clear what a major business venture Woodstock was -- in fact, Woodstock Ventures was the name of the company formed to put it on. The irony of an event devoted to free love being birthed entirely by people with money on the brain is delicious fare.

But once the concert starts up, the energy dissolves. Elliot wanders over to Yasgur's fields to check out the scene, and soon gets caught up in acid trips and orgies and all that.

There are a number of supporting characters, played by actors giving some adept performances. Unfortunately, they seem less like real people than contrivances of the script (by longtime Ang Lee collaborator James Schamus, based on Tiber's book).

There's Billy, a burnt-out Vietnam vet played by Emile Hirsch who keeps wading through flashbacks, and Michael Lang (Jonathan Groff), the Zen-like concert organizer who acts as if he knows something no one else does. The most artificial figure is Liev Schreiber as Vilma, a cross-dressing tough who provides security and dispenses assuring platitudes.

Elliot's parents seem like they want to be at the center of the story, but keep getting shunted to the periphery. Mrs. Teichburg has a penny-pinching mania that drives a wedge between the family, but the film never bothers to explore the source of her obsession.

Lee and Schamus should have forgotten about Woodstock, and stayed at the El Monaco.

2.5 stars

DVD review: "Defiance"

The cinematic take on Jews during World War II has become almost a cliché of victimology. That's why "Defiance," one of 2008's best dramas, is so refreshing in its presentation of Belarus Jews fighting back against the Nazi regime.

Compare this film directed and co-written by Edward Zwick ("Glory," "Blood Diamond") with "Valkyrie," which is set in the same historical period and was released around the same time. While the Tom Cruise flick tells us virtually nothing we didn't already know, "Defiance" is full of revelations about how nearly a thousand Jews hid out in the deep forests of Eastern Europe, surviving freezing winters and near-starvation, to mount an effective insurgency against the German war machine.

Daniel Craig gives a nuanced, layered performance as the leader of the Bielski brothers, with Liev Schreiber as his hot-headed brother. Zwick, who provides a lively and informative commentary track for the DVD, muses that Craig took the part because he wanted to something "reluctant and soulful" after his career-changing turn as the new James Bond.

Other extra features are a bit on the rote side. There's a 25-minute making-of documentary, which reveals among other things that they used shredded paper to simulate all the forest snow. A featurette called "Children of the Otriad" combines interviews with the offspring of the Bielski brothers and family films and photographs. There's also a brief, wordless slideshow of photographs by Zwick of actual surviving Bielski partisans.

"Defiance" didn't do very well at the box office, and that's a shame, because this is not only a gritty war drama, but a fresh take on an aspect of the Jewish genocide that history has ignored. For those who are interested, check out "The Bielski Brothers," an excellent documentary by the History Channel that also recently came out on video, for a detailed recounting of their defiant stand.

Movie: 3.5 stars
Extras: 3 stars