Defiance (2008)

Director Edward Zwick (“Glory”) has an amazing true story in “Defiance.” In 1939, two Belarusian brothers named Bielski (Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber) lead a gun-and-blade rebellion against Nazi invaders, while shepherding hundreds of fleeing Jews deep into the dark forest to hide. At first only a handful of Jews come. Then hundreds arrive. For three years. The masses have much else to fear with disease, inner-rebellions, winter and matter-of-fact starvation hovering constantly, also promising death. Those are glorious origins, haunting and heroic, but Zwick still doesn’t trust this story enough. He plays Whack-a-Mole with war movie clichés, including an eye-roller scene where Mr. Bond rides a white horse (!) before his followers, bellowing aloud a maudlin “Braveheart” speech. My face turned blue. An “Exodus”-like retreat ends with our heroes using rifles to battle a full Nazi tank division, and thus history is truncated for “Red Dawn” stunts and action. C+

Glory (1989)

"Glory" was a longtime favorite film, top five. It's dropped down the list quite a bit since I saw it in a theater in 1989, being absolutely blown away by the film's story of the first black Union regiment in the Civil War. And I still am blown away, in absolute awe of the relentless depictions of battle, and the camp scenes, and the drama of an America going through self-inflicted, suicidal hell (and we think we have it rough now, oh, what bad memories we have) to regain part of its soul. Or maybe get a new one, depending on how you see history. Maybe the latter, more, to me.

Matthew Broderick put away his Ferris to play Robert Shaw, the young colonel tasked with leading the 54th Mass. Among his charges are Morgan Freeman as a grave digger turned spiritual guru, Andre Braugher as free man and childhood friend of Shaw's, and -- in a breakout role -- Denzel Washington as an escaped slave righteously and rightfully angry at the world.

The battle scenes are gritty, dirty and seem realistic (having participated in Civil War re-enactments myself) and the story, again, is amazing. Director Edward Zwick ("Legends of the Fall") lays on the pomp and the heroism thick, but this still is a great, great film. The cinematography by Freddie Francis still amazes 20 years later. Some hate Broderick in the lead, but I think he's perfect. Broderick is a light dramatic actor (excellent comedian), and he plays a man out of his league here who must rise to the occasion and the sheer aura of those around him. At film's end, Broderick does that. A

Legends of the Fall (1994)

** SPOLERS AHEAD*** I re-watched the 1994 Edward Zwick-directed melodrama "Legends of the Fall" the other day on TV, and despite it being heavily edited and formatted to a square, I had the exact reaction that I did at the theater years back. It's crap.

Circa 1914 in the American West, a father (Anthony Hopkins) and his three grown sons are hearty ol' patriots until the youngest brother (Henry Thomas) brings home a woman (Julia Ormond), an act that spells tragedy in all CAPS as she soon falls for middle mega-stud brother (Brad Pitt), and then settles for the practical and eldest bro (Aiden Quinn). That comes after after Thomas' innocent self is butchered in World War I and Pitt's stud goes off the mental ranch.

That final grisly, err, grizzly, scene still plays as a punch line to a Monty Python sketch. Worse, the quasi-junior-high-Shakespearean dramatics are made more comedic by crap acting from Hopkins, who squints and blabbers like Popeye's grouchy poppa. With God-awful music, slo-mo cinematography and ABC-daytime soap dialogue, "Legends" seems made for the Oxygen channel, which is where I re-watched it. C