brilliant actors, brilliant editing

Beautiful, moving film.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Very little good I can say about this film. The only way I can see anyone actually liking this film is if there were a) israeli b) a die-hard israeli supporter or c) clueless. Oddly, one thing this film ironically accomplishes is that it underscores just how disconnected many Israelis are from the people they claim to know everything about. The very fact they chose the title "Lebanon", when it's about israeli soldiers in a tank, rather than being about Lebanon, Lebanese people or giving ANY 2-dimensional view into the conflict is proof of the arrogance of the writer/director of this farce. And I seriously don't know why Ashraf Barhom allows himself to continuously play degrading roles, but he is to Arabs what minstrel shows were to African Americans. The actual events in this film did occur...maybe one day someone will actually create a film that do them justice.

first of all I've heard all the comments about the weak shot. For me this was the reason I watched it. It's a story of young men thrown into conflict with little or no training. And the whole idea of what they see from that enclosed space is for me the most compelling part of the film. As an exercise in claustrophobic atmosphere it wins hands down. This was not a big budget film this wasn't your Private Ryan this was Das Boot set in a tank. Although I agree the tactics and deployment of the tank were at best the logical and against modern warfare theories. It was done for artistic license, which you have to in these situations. More than anything from me it boiled down to a few young men making very grown-up and misinformed decisions. But isn't that the point? In Old Man's War Novel by John Scalzi he explores this very thing. And tries to make the position that until you have lived a life you cannot determine the life of another.

Whether or not the plot itself is believable or realistic will depend on a number of things: your political inclinations, your love/hate for war movies dealing with the psychological/emotional aspect of war rather than the jingoistic portrayal you will get in a run-of-the- mill summer blockbuster, and some suspension of disbelief depending on the previous two. Having said that, if you are willing to set aside any perceived slights or petty arguments about the above, what you will find here is a tightly directed character piece shot in the confined space of a war machine, portraying a number of specific themes about man's place in conflict - what a man owes, what a man owns, and what a man can expect from a war...moreover, how war situations can affect soldiers, civilians, and even societies drawn unwillingly into the conflicts. I find all these especially fascinating to ruminate upon and to learn from, particularly in the light of the wars of the last decade. The acting is excellent and believable although lacking in any tour-de-force parts, and the action scenes are intense. Appreciating the filming challenge presented here is also very enjoyable, and I believe that challenge has been overcome splendidly by the director. If you like war-themed movies with a dose of the more cerebral, then I would highly highly recommend this movie.

As a war movie this is ordinary with ordinary insights, but a neat idea in terms of abstraction. We are inside a tank, this as the mind's eye, looking out at fleeting glimpses of war, moving north to madness. We share the perspective of young Israeli soldiers throughout and nothing more. We are baffled at what it's all supposed to be out there, who is on our side and where's the rest of the army. We see as they see through the viewfinder, the experience both framed and as it happens, which mirrors our own experience. The outside images are meant to unravel some of the maddening complexity of war, guerillas using human shields, a distraught mother looking for her child reaps a moment of affection, but more abstractly this: the inability of the mind to make sense of incomprehensible reality and create a narrative out of it. So I don't mind overmuch the stock characters and situations, the tank commander who loses it, the shooter with a conscience and so on. I do mind that more is not made of the self-referential nature of seeing and story, too bad because the parts are all there. Forget about Saving Ryan or Hurt Locker, this concept has tremendous power, war as mobilized by images in the eye. A great study, akin to Blowup.Imagine. A journey linking transient human reflections in the pools of water on the tank floor, to harried images of harried reality flashing by, to fixed images of images in the photos and advertising posters of the travel agency, unreal in this context. And all of them framed, transient snapshots of story, as is war, as we consume war. It's all in the film, almost, but the focus is on more predictable stuff.The ending is effective in this regard. What if there is no story out there in the universe? Where is the music coming from? What does it mean that the same godhead can imagine tanks and sunflower fields? Near the end the eye is cracked. Alas, a missed chance overall.