Defiance

Near the beginning of WWII, the Bielski brothers lose their family to the Nazis. They flee to the Lipicza´nska Forest in Belorussia and decide to fight back. Tuvia (Daniel Craig) wants to fight by helping other Jews escape the on-going attempt at genocide. Zus (Lev Schreiber) wants to use guns. Eventually they gather a large number of people in the forest. They have to fight not only the Germans but disease, the cold, and sometimes each other. Zus leaves to join the partisans who have more and better weapons.

You can pretty much write the script for this one yourself, but it's still an effective movie. Watching it reminded me once again that we never learn anything. We still seem to think that killing and war will solve all our problems. Pretty depressing when you think about it, but the movie, based on a true story, does at least show that some people have the grit and the spirit to survive the terrible things that others do to them.

I don't know much about the Bielski brothers, so I didn't really care whether the movie stuck close to what actually happened. It works well enough on its own terms. Check it out.