Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
The story of mime Marcel Marceau as he works with a group of Jewish boy scouts and the French Resistance to save the lives of ten thousand orphans during World War II.
Resistance (2020) tells the remarkable true story of Marcel Marceau's involvement with the French Resistance and Jewish orphans during WWII, which is a genuinely compelling and underexplored historical subject. The plot is solid but somewhat conventional in its war drama structure, hitting familiar beats of the genre without fully capitalizing on its unique subject matter. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as Marceau is earnest and committed, though the ensemble acting is serviceable rather than outstanding. Cinematography is competent and period-appropriate without being especially distinctive. The film's novelty comes from its focus on Marceau's formative wartime experiences and the mime elements woven into the narrative, which is a genuinely unusual angle for a WWII film, though the execution doesn't always fully explore this premise. The ending, while historically grounded, feels somewhat abrupt and emotionally underdelivered, failing to land with the weight the story deserves.