Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Defiance (2008) -vs- Valkyrie (2008)

Super Jews and Good Germans Take On the Nazis

The Smackdown. It’s Academy Award-worthy season, and you know what that means! Nazis! The multiplex is practically teeming with them. "Valkyrie" served them up for Christmas, and "Defiance" held it's own limited New Year's Eve release to qualify for awards season. Meanwhile, "The Reader" sneaked into a few theaters as well, waiting for its big push in January. Why, you ask, are the Nazis still cinema's all-purpose go-to bad guys? Silly Goosesteppers, you know why. Because everybody hates the Nazis, even the Germans! (Not all Germans, just the ones in “Valkyrie.") For your cinematic Nazi-hating pleasure, it’s “Defiance” against “Valkyrie” as we re-fight World War Two, the war everybody loves starring the villains everybody still loves to hate.

The Challenger. “Defiance” is an earnest piece of work, based on the true story of three Jewish brothers who escape Nazi-occupied Poland to hide in the Belarussian forest where they join the Russian resistance fighters and build a semi-safe haven for over a thousand other exiled Jews. There are a lot of characters in “Defiance.” Most of the exiled Jews are little more than unindividuated dress extras; we learn precious few of their stories or names. They fall into two categories – the gratefully compliant and the nasty rebels. Daniel (James Bond) Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie (Billy Elliott) Bell play the least likely looking brothers since “Twins” Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Schreiber has made a career of playing Jewish… Craig not so much.

Black Book (2007) -vs- Europa, Europa (1990)

Editor's Note:  A lot of people are probably thinking about Nazis lately, given that Tom Cruise's "Valkyrie," Daniel Craig's "Defiance," and Kate Winslet's "The Reader" are all in release. Here's an earlier Smackdown of two foreign films that tackle Nazism from the inside-out.

Love in the Time of Fascism

The Smackdown. It's the ultimate identity crisis. You have to pretend to be a part of a group that wants to kill everybody in the group you're really in.  That's the jeopardy that two foreign language films (both supposedly based on true stories) place their lead characters in.  Both "Black Book" and "Europa, Europa" put Jewish characters in the agonizing peril of having to pass as Nazis in order to stay alive during World War II. Each one wants to raise the question about what's acceptable behavior in order to survive and what a person is willing to risk in order to strike back at a hated enemy. If you start to act like them, do you run the risk of becoming the thing you hate the most? 

The Challenger. Director Paul Verhoeven has gone back to his roots with this World War II film set in occupied Holland. He started there a quarter of a century ago with "Soldier of Orange" but took a long strange detour with films like "Total Recall," "Basic Instinct" and, yes, "Showgirls." He's got plenty of sex and violence in this tale about Rachel Stein, a young Jewish woman who survives the holocaust by adapting whenever and however necessary. She's played by the phenomenal Dutch actress Carice van Houten. After losing her family from a betrayal that leads to their death by machine gun fire, she joins the Resistance and finds her most important work to be the seduction of the head of the Gestapo in The Hauge, a sensitive Nazi-type named Ludwig Mantze. He's plahyed by my favorite German actor, Sebastian Koch, who stole the show in last year's "The Lives of Others."

Quantum of Solace (2008) -vs- Casino Royale (2006)

The Smackdown.  It's the longest running movie franchise in the history of the world.  In total, it has grossed billions worldwide, surpassing perhaps the gross domestic product of many small nations.  In 1964, James Bond skulked from the hard-boiled cynicism of Ian Fleming's novels onto the Silver Screen, introducing the world to their Favorite Super Spy.  Yet time was unkind to the Bond franchise, and the films descended into stale parodies of themselves, straying further from not only Sean Connery's iconic debut but also the fascinating, amoral spy of Fleming's novels.  Then came "Casino Royale" and Daniel Craig.  With Daniel Craig, Bond found his relevance again, and his heart.  Today, facing high expectations in the wake of "Casino Royale", "Quantum of Solace" has stirred up violent controversy as to its quality against "Casino Royale."  Today, we let the newest Bond go up against the last Bond, trying to put what has become something of a media field day to rest.

The Challenger.  "Quantum of Solace" arrives under the direction of Mark Forster, scripted by Neal Purvis & Robert Wade and Paul Haggis.  The movie is a somber epilogue to "Casino Royale", with a betrayed and bitter Bond viciously hunting the mysterious organization behind his former lover's demise. Bond is largely unforgiving, a force that is at times both brutal and surgical.  As he nears the organization (named Quantum), Bond finds himself in the middle of a South American coup de tat, underscored by an oddly realistic attempt to horde the world's water supply.  Incorporating elegance and taste with the typical tropes of Bond, "Quantum of Solace" is a lean--if somewhat too short--depiction of a Bond that finds a cold place for Double-O Seven in the modern world.

Spy Smackdown: Bond -vs- Bond

Editor's Note:  Before "Quantum of Solace" finally hit the theaters, we asked two of our critics -- Beau DeMayo and Stephen Bell -- to go into Total Bond Immersion.  After all, there have been six Bonds (yes, six!) in this film franchise history.  The mission given to Beau and Stephen was to decide who really does (or did) do it better.  To level the playing field, they've taken these half-dozen Bonds back to their first missions.  That's the Smack: who did it better the first time around? 

The Smackdown.  (Beau DeMayo & Stephen Bell)  It's a name that has ignited decades of debate.  A name spanning generations.  A name that carries with it danger, sex, and a billion-dollar franchise.  And, no, we're not talking about James T. Kirk.  The name we have in mind: "Bond, James Bond."  Whenever another actor assumes the role of the world's greatest spy, the question is asked -- who is the best?  

Dr. No.  Sean Connery is often presumed to be the best James Bond.  It helps that he is also the first actor who received the chance to define the character for audiences, and carries with him a certain nostalgia.  In Dr. No, Connery's Bond investigates the death of a fellow MI-6 agent.  Along the way, he meets the very first Bond girl, fights a mechanical dragon, and squares off against the steel-wristed Julius No and his army of candy-colored bubble soldiers (seriously).  Despite its more fantastical elements, Dr. No's pulpy hard-boiled feel and Connery's dry, hyper-sexualized Bond set the standard for what would become cinema's longest and most profitable franchise.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  Who is George Lazenby?  A common question.  Faced with the daunting task of filling in Connery's polished loafers, Lazenby finds a lucky comfort in what is essentially a new take on the Bond Connery had established over his first five films.  In OHMSS, Lazenby's Bond abandons the pulp and fantasy of previous films and focuses instead on a misogynist spy who finds himself capable of settling down -- albeit with a crime lord's daughter.  However, all is not love and Louis Armstrong for Lazenby's layman Bond as arch-nemesis Blofeld returns with an army of hypnotized sex kittens, manipulated into unknowingly wrecking the world's economy.  The film has the touch of a serious filmmaker, whose gorgeous cinematography and sharp editing highlights what is essentially the Winter Olympics of Bond films.

Live and Let Die.  A gentle, slightly-aged Bond, Roger Moore brings a certain bored charm, a detached sense of superiority, to Double-O Seven's repertoire.  Highly groomed and witty, Moore's Bond debuts in a plot similar to Connery's debut: Double-O Seven investigates the mysterious murders of fellow MI-6 agents.  Ambling through a disjointed and campy plot, Moore matches wits with Mr. Big and his alarmingly-stereotyped army of superstitious black men dedicated to monopolizing America's drug trade.  Moore also gets a chance to court a tarot-card-wielding Jane Seymour, whom Stephen refers to as, "a super, super sexy young Dr. Quinn."  Who knew?  Apparently, she did.  She can read the future.

The Living Daylights.  By the end of Moore's run, Bond had swapped his License to Kill for a License to Social Security.  The franchise had reached a low-point, having already exhausted Bond creator Ian Fleming's original novels.  Enter Timothy Dalton, a darker and somber Bond who finds himself embroiled in an international conspiracy after assisting in the defection of a KGB officer.  A low-key thriller with no over-the-top villains or schemes, The Living Daylights suited Dalton's toned-down and funless Bond.

Goldeneye.  Stephen perks up whenever we mention this movie.  There's a reason.  Pierce Brosnan jumps into Bond by bungee-jumping into a Soviet arms factory.  With the Cold War done and over, Brosnan's Bond enters the modern era with an assertive female spymaster in Judi Dench, a treacherous Double-O agent, and a plot to sabotage the Western world's credit system.  An unofficial reboot in both tone and style, Goldeneye offered Brosnan a clean foundation on which to build his confident, charismatic, well-acted, non-smoking Bond.

Casino Royale. Casino Royale relaunched the Bond franchise, taking the story back to the very first of Ian Fleming's novels.  Daniel Craig inherits the Bond mantle, portraying the newly christened Double-O as an unsophisticated, brutal force that often times acts more instinctively than wisely.  In Casino Royale, Craig's arrogant and untested Bond battles Le Chiffre, accountant-extraordinaire for a mysterious terrorist organization operating well beyond the reach of MI-6.  Like OHMSS, this film showcases a vulnerable Bond who grows through tragic love. 

Deep Impact (1998) -vs- Armageddon (1998)

It's the End of the World as We Know It

The Smackdown.  Ten summers ago, during the Year of Lewinsky, Paramount/DreamWorks got into a game of chicken with Touchstone.  The result was two disaster films about comets that were about to hit the Earth and destroy all life.  I won't tell you how the Earth fared yet, but I can tell you that the point of impact in the theaters was about two months apart.  Talk about operational redundancy!  In any case, the summer of 1998 gave us a cinematic laboratory experiment in how the same story can yield entirely different results.  Having watched these two films back-to-back, here's my take.  10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... we have lift-off...

I've been thinking a lot about this topic a decade later because I'm writing a miniseries for Animal Planet about mass extinction events ("Animal Armageddon") set to air in early 2009, and the latest episode I'm tackling is the one where the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, most of them within a single hellish hour some 65-million years ago. 

In doing this research, I've also come across an excellent article in the June 2008 Atlantic by Gregg Easterbrook, "The Sky Is Falling."  In it, Easterbrook makes the point that scientists are coming to the conclusion that we have vastly underestimated the probability of these cosmic impacts because they have way underestimated how many of these viable "planet killers" are out there in our vicinity.  Here's their video link.

The point is, these two films aren't just hypotheticals.  This kind of extinction level event has happened before and it could happen again -- maybe even on our watch.

In Hollywood, we like to talk about the "log-line" of something, the equivalent of a "TV Guide" listing.  So, before we get into talking about how these two films are different, let's state their similarity in a single log-line that both could share:

• When a "planet-killer" sized comet is discovered to be on an imminent collision course with Earth, an international space effort -- led by the United States -- sets out to deflect the object by setting off nuclear weapons deep inside its core so that it will miss Earth and, therefore, save humanity.

Even though "Deep Impact" was the first in the theaters, for our purposes, we're giving the "Defending Champion" designation to "Armageddon" because it won at the box-office.  "Armageddon" grossed $553-million world-wide to the "Deep Impact" gross of $349-million.  Incredibly, IMDB (the Internet Movie Data Base) has it as a virtual tie with both films scoring a 5.9 out of ten audience rating.  So, let's start with "The Challenger"... "Deep Impact."