Bill Paxton stars as an American fighter pilot whose plane is shot down over Belgium during WWII. A boy finds him and brings him to the home of Julia Ormond, whose husband (Philippe Volter) is part of the Belgian resistance against the Nazis. While hiding him from the clutches of the Germans, she and Paxton grow close and eventually fall in love. Naturally, her jealous husband learns about her betrayal and sells them out to the Nazis.
Resistance is an unapologetically schmaltzy and well-intentioned period drama. Just as U-571 was a throwback to the old Men on a Mission actioners, this is a retooling of the war-torn romance films of the Golden Age of Hollywood. (The resistance leaders are so cliche that they would look right at home in Top Secret!) All of this is relatively low key, predictable, and a tad forgettable, but at least it moves at an agreeable pace and doesn’t get bogged down with a lot of unnecessary subplots like a lot of similar romance dramas.
In fact, the pacing is a bit too fast as the film enters the homestretch. The ending is so rushed that it almost feels like it was the victim of reshoots. The fact that major plot points are delivered via exposition by two minor supporting characters at the very end is especially odd and ends the movie on an unsatisfying note.
I guess the main stumbling block is that there isn’t a whole lot of sparks between Ormond and Paxton. In their separate scenes with other actors they are quite good. However, their romantic sequences are lacking passion and kind of fizzle out before they can even gather any momentum. Plus, the kid who acts as a surrogate son to the couple will grate on your nerves pretty quick. It’s enough to make Resistance awfully resistible.
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