Director Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond, The Last Samurai, Glory) is back with another one of his inspirational war stories. This time he is retelling the true story of three Jewish brothers who escape from Nazi-occupied Poland into a forest near Russia. There they build a fortified village inside the forest and team up with a Russian resistance group in order to save the lives of over 1200 Jews.

I know a lot of people are divided on Zwick’s movies, but the only one I’ve seen recently is Blood Diamond (which I enjoyed). It looks like there may be some decent action in this movie, although the fact that it’s coming out in December makes it seem like pretty obvious Oscar bait. Between this movie, Valkyrie, and The Counterfeiters (a German film on the Academy short list for Best Foreign Film this year), it seems like we may be experiencing a bit of a resurgence in stories dealing with the Nazi regime and World War II. When done well, they certainly make for powerful films, but too many at once and the effect is kind of lost. Defiance hits theatres on December 26th, 2008; check out the trailer below.