charlytully Review of Resistance

Resistance (2003)

"They look like they're dancing, but they can't find the floor"

[7/10 · 10 February 2009]

That is how young Jean Benoit (portrayed by Antoine Van Lierde) describes the victims of a mass retaliation public hanging conducted by the Nazis after his grocery clerk friend Lucette Oomlop (Sandrine Bonnaire) has machined-gunned three German guards at the wreckage of Maj. Ted Brice's (Bill Paxton) B-24 reconnaissance plane late one night to recover a notebook Ted apparently left behind in his eagerness to scope out the local females. (Too bad he did not heed the message of the Andrews Sisters tune playing on the soundtrack, "Straighten up and fly right!") The tag lines for this maudlin war flick are "an act of courage will decide their destinies" and "an epic tale of courage, passion, and sacrifice." As in Ted seduces his married Resistance hostess Claire Daussois (Julia Ormond), and then drives her all over Belgium sampling the local night life instead of hiding in the barn as he's been told, single-handedly breaking up the cell of resisters who are trying to save him and help the Allies prepare for D-Day? After viewing the movie, people will be shaking their heads "uh-huh" and longing for something as "realistic" as Michael Bay's Affleck-Beckinsale-Hartnett 2001 tear-jerker, PEARL HARBOR. How did writer-director Todd Komarnicki pitch this mess to the studio RESISTANCE bankrupted: THE GREAT ESCAPE meets DIRTY DANCING? Three years after this fiasco, Paul Verhoeven's ZWARTBOEK (THE BLACK BOOK) covered much of this same ground with more authenticity, more drama, and better production values all around. Do yourself a favor and rent that; RESISTANCE should be left dancing in the wind.