Hey, everyone. ”Moriarty” here.

The other day I ran a test screening reaction to Ed Zwick’s Christmas movie, DEFIANCE, starring Daniel Craig. As I understand it, they’re just at the start of this process, and zwick’s going to be doing some work on the film, fine-tuning it, for a while still. None of the reviews at the moment should be taken too seriously... it’s more like an initial taking-of-the-temperature, a sort of “what kind of shape is this thing in at the moment?”

Having said that, I am curious about this one. I’m torn on Zwick overall. I like his early movies. GLORY was great, and COURAGE UNDER FIRE was better than people gave it credit for at the time, complete with the performance that first made me notice Matt Damon. I’m just not a fan of his last few films, but that’s more because I dislike movies in which white characters swoop into foreign cultures and save them, and there’s some of that in both BLOOD DIAMOND and THE LAST SAMURAI. That’s a real pet peeve for me, and it’s not really Zwick’s fault.

This one sounds interesting, and I think Daniel Craig is proving to be the only guy in the entire Bond franchise so far who is able to play 007 and still have a viable leading-man career in big and small films alike. Neat trick, that.

Hey Harry,

Suzie here, While on holiday in LA recently I managed to get into a test screening of Ed Zwicks new movie Defiance. After reading the spy review that was posted a few days ago I wonder If this person was one of the two guys who kept talking all the way through the movie and were more interested in getting an autograph at the end than watching the movie.

Here is what I thought of it, Im not sure of the format for this type of thing so here goes –

James Bond and Oscar winning director Ed Zwick take on the Nazis.

Saw a preview screening of DEFIANCE last week in Woodland Hills. Daniel Craig stars as Tuvia Bielski in the true WWII story of three Jewish brothers who hid in the Belorussian forests and built a community of partisan fighters, saving over 1200 Jews by war’s end.

Liev Schreiber (Zus Bielski) and Jamie Bell (Asael Bielski) star alongside Craig as his two younger brothers. Both Craig and Schreiber give great performances as the older brothers competing for leadership, and Jamie Bell, who most recently starred in the abysmal Jumper, gives a surprisingly good performance as well.

Zwick has created one of the most beautiful and thought provoking films of his career and definitely one of the most Oscar worthy movies to hit cinemas in years. War and destruction has never been so captivating and moving. There have been dozens of war movies in recent years but none have left me caring so much or feeling so attached to the characters. My eyeballs wouldn’t break from the screen for the full 120 mins, and by the film’s end, I wasn’t ready to stop watching. I can’t wait for the release (which appears to be some time this winter) in order to see it again.

It’s a superb film with a nice balance of heavy hitting action and intense drama, but if that’s not enough to make you want to see it, just the fact that these on-screen heroes existed in real life definitely make it worth the watch.

This is a WWII movie that doesn’t hide or glamorize war but shows the intense reality of what happens when people band together against overwhelming evil and survive.

Its a great old fashioned war movie and definitely one to see on the big screen.

Thanks, Suzie