schaefer.oliver

This kind of "Transformers on water" movie is extremely dumb, filled with every conceivable cliché, populated with cardboard characters, filled with laughable and nearly pain-inducing dialogue and leaving even the least bit of logic deep under the ocean. Nonetheless it's more entertaining than the annoying "Transformers 3" in a "so bad it's good" way. Sorry, Universal, next time please think about paying one or two of your 200 million bucks to a decent screenwriter. And to Peter Berg: I can't believe that you once directed the superb "The kingdom" and after seeing this dumbfest I'm really glad your "Dune" project didn't got off the ground.

I have nothing good to say about this production, except the decent score by Raimi's old pal Joe LoDuca. On every other level this one fails miserably and it's beyond my imagination, what Sam Raimi found so interesting in the script or the story to produce this. Nothing here works and every horror cliché one can think about gets served. Wooden acting from everyone is OK for me, if the story and suspense works. But here it adds to the general boredom of the whole thing. Sad to say, but it's on the same level as Raimi's other productions like "Boogeyman" or "The Grudge". They made some money but were equally full of cheap thrills and empty of any kind of suspense. Hey Sam, you made "Evil Dead" and "Darkman". Even non-horror "The Gift" was a lot scarier than this clunker. Can't you start producing movies on an equal level or do you just reserve the good scripts for yourself, like your last one "Drag me to hell"?.

Wow, I never thought that I would ever mention Edward Zwick's name and the word "boring" into one sentence. Since "Glory" I always looked forward to the next film by this director. Yes, his films are of a varied quality, but they were always highly entertaining (Legends of the fall, Blood diamond), sometimes even thought provoking (Glory, The siege, Courage under fire). Going into a Zwick film I'm expecting something bold, big, pathetic (in a great cinematic way), great set pieces, fine music and fine camera-work...something that carries me away into the movie.

So what happened here? This film has an interesting premise, but the execution is a very long and very slow and very uninvolving bore. Cardboard characters, villains that look so obviously bad it's nearly laughable, bad staged action sequences and not an ounce of suspense. The fact that this is based on a true story makes the failure even more disappointing. And one more thing I never saw in any other Zwick film: This one looks cheap, to put it mildly. It looks TV-cheap, the sets, the one and only tank, the handful of German soldiers... Hey Ed, you made the spectacular, great on all levels "Glory", also a true story, also more of a drama than a war movie. Everything that works in "Glory" fails in "Defiance". I hope this is one misstep and that your next movie will have all the qualities I like so much in your films.