This nominee for Best Foreign Language Film of 2013 is just now getting a sizeable rollout in U.S. theaters.
What Works: The premise is terrific. It revolves around the title character (a young Palestinian running with friends that could be called a very loose terrorist cell) being involved in the plot to kill an Israeli soldier, getting captured, and then being given a choice by an Israeli intelligence officer: he can spend the rest of his life in prison or he can inform on his friends. [The scenes between him and the Israeli spy are excellent, and the smartest scenes in the movie.] This should have been a riveting moral conundrum fraught with high stakes tension…
What Doesn’t Work: …but it really isn’t because Omar is (spoiler alert) never really all that tempted to inform. He seems too ideologically pure and/or angrily proud (the movie never makes it clear which one…another flaw) to really sweat about possible betrayal, and it’s like putting a rock in a situation that you really want to see a sponge in. The lead actor is like a smoldering version of Sacha Baron Cohen, but the movie never gives him a real chance to doubt himself. The ending also didn’t feel entirely satisfying.
What I Would Have Done Differently: The Palestinians seem mostly like a ragtag bunch of street kids who think they’re revolutionaries (nearly half a “cell” is undone because they’re trying to sleep with or protect the same young girl) and the Israelis seem like the corporation behind Robocop. A smarter movie might have at least had fun with this huge contrast or seemed aware of it. The Palestinian leads should have felt more like trapped rats clawing for a way out and really escalated the tension of the situation.