Culture

James Bond goes back in time.If we agree we go to movies in large part to be entertained, Defiance is a success. If further we can agree we also go to be moved or educated, Defiance does that as well. Lastly, if we care about movie pedigrees (director, actors, cinematographer) Defiance scores again as a full-blooded thoroughbred.
Director Edward Zwick (Glory, Blood Diamond, Legends of the Fall, Last Samurai) has a style and pace that are recognizable and satisfying. There are typically a few overly romantic moments in his films that are otherwise wonderful examples of story telling. His heroes thrive on long odds.

Defiance
Starring: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell. Directed by Edward Zwick.
Rated R.

I'm your biggest fan. 3-D is the perfect way to remake an 80's slasher flick. In a word, My
Bloody Valentine 3-D rules. With newer, higher-tech 3-D glasses, as
soon as your eyes adjust everything starts looking more realistic. It's
a mess-with-your-mind effect. The initial scenes cause a voyeuristic
wax museum feel then soon become hyper-realistic. Sitting around a
diner counter, actor Kevin Tighe looked so real I expected him to walk
up, shake my hand and say, "Hey Salvo, how ya likin' the movie so far?"
Other
things get more noticeable too-a blood-spattered wall, the character's
complexions, fog on windshields, hell, even tire treads stand out. Gore
has never looked more eye-poppingly gruesome, especially when someone's
ribcage is split open. Okay, enough about 3-D, let's talk about the
flick itself. It's a pumped-up remake of the drearily hacked together
1981 flick of the same name and it's a gazillion times better. The
original was so dark that you couldn't even see what the hell was going
on. Well, that's all been changed. There's nothing you don't see in MBV
3-D.

Do you find me creepy?The Unborn is not scary enough to be good and too serious to be "so bad
it's good." The flick is a gab-fest generic possession story that goes
beyond absurd and way beyond caring if it makes sense or not.

The
convoluted mess of a plot doesn't even try to win you over; it just
employs one sad old trick after another; a crumbling insane asylum,
tricky mirrors and doorways-there's even the medicine cabinet mirror
trick that I have complained about so often. The newest twists thrown
in are some hints of Jewish folklore, the Kabbalah and crickets from
Jerusalem. The snappy and clearly intended-to-be-witty dialogue tries
to distract, but it's so off the hook that you'll want to run out and
rent your favorite horror movie to wash the memory out of your eyes.

I finish things. In Hollywood, there's following convention, defying convention, and
then there's Clint Eastwood, who created his own set of conventions,
and is now shredding them to pieces in the last decade of a career
spanning more than 50 years.

I'm required to say this whenever I
review an Eastwood film. That said, Gran Torino probably ranks in the
bottom half of Eastwood's past six or seven films, which is sort of
like saying Oprah isn't quite the richest woman in the world. And while
I've been tempted to conclude that his directorial outings fare better
without him in front of the camera, this film is Exhibit A in the case
to prove me wrong.