As I sit here in a Midtown cafe, sipping a latte and gazing leisurely at the late-season Christmas lights as dusk settles over this well-heated monument to 21st-century consumer pleasures, it's hard to imagine the potential for chaos.
But what would life be like if, say, a group of armed fanatics went about shooting and arresting every foreigner they could find, and I was forced to flee, with nothing more than the clothes on my back, into hiding on the wintry slopes of Mount Takao?
One thing I can say about director Edward Zwick's "Defiance" is that whatever its flaws — and overly Hollywoodizing its grim, real-life subject is a big one — it definitely made me feel what the above scenario would be like, the utter desperation and animal-like struggle for survival in the face of brutal repression.