Wonderful character development!

hyped garbage

Best movie ever!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

Dr. Amin Jaafari is a non-practicing Muslim who is a celebrated surgeon in Tel Aviv. He still faces suspicions and racism but he seems to be the pinnacle of integration and secularism. Then everything changes when his Arab Christian wife Siham becomes a suicide bomber who killed 17 people including many children. He is devastated and isolated. He goes to seek the truth by himself.This movie takes the intractable Palestinian-Isreali conflict down to a personal level. The first half is filled with great tension. However it doesn't carry it all the way through. The reveal, if it could be called that, is not compelling enough. It hints on something more shattering. Also the use of a Christian wife demands something more than the unity-of-oppression argument. It seems like an unnecessary side trip. Mostly it worked because the first half is so strong, and the second half isn't too bad.

The medium line is often difficult to walk. To me "the attack" is about a man trying to walk this line of truth without falling on any side of hatred and narrow minded feelings of bigotism or revenge. Thus the theme of this movie is central to our time.It shows religious fanaticism with a human side, not to undermine it, not to excuse it; but to show us it's true origins...between a desperate sense of meaning for one's one life, communitarian reverence of heroism, but also those moment of doubt that are well depicted in the movie (ex! last calling scene).If, as the Doctor says,"those things are beyond us ", it just really leaves us with the question of how to put them behind. This being said, the plot is halting a bit. The last scene, about departure and sadness, also fails to capture the movies core. Thus good, but not parsimonious and focused enough to make it the great masterpiece it could rightfully have had a claim to.

"The Attack" is an excitingly refreshing view of the Israeli Palestinian crisis with dark overtones and deep insight to this hotbed area of the world. It is Written by Ziad Doueiri, and Joelle Touma. It is directed by Ziad Doueiri. The story revolves around an Arab surgeon receiving living and working at a hospital in Israel. He receives the high medal of honor from his scientific colleagues when his phone rings. This initiates the search for the reason his wife, whom he has lived with for fifteen years, has become a terrorist. Without spoiling the plot, I can only urge you to see this movie on the grounds that it will promote a deeper understanding of the strength of the emotional overlay on either side of the border. In addition it contains some spectacular cinematography of the Holy Land with with awe inspiring aerial shots.

If anything, The Attack, Ziad Doueiri's even-handed film of Yasmina Khadra's novel, tends toward the Palestinian side. An early report has an Israeli policeman refusing to let an Arab enter a mosque unless he smokes a cigarette first. As it is Ramadan the Arab refuses, there is a scuffle, the cop is stabbed, the Palestinian arrested. However necessary the defensive posture, an exchange at a checkpoint shows Israeli abruptness almost trigger a fatal melee. The Arab surgeon hero, Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman), is seen to grow as he shifts from being the Israelis' house Arab to refusing to help the Israelis commit more suppression in the name of justice and peace. His suicide bomber wife Siham (Reymond Amsalem) strikes a powerful chord when she writes that she can't bear bringing a child to live without a homeland. The Jews know about that, but that's not grounds for their national suicide.When the surgeon receives his Israeli medical award, the first Arab to receive it in its 41 year history, he recalls experiencing Jewish hostility. He considers that erased by the support he received in his medical education and career, culminating in this award. But we see he is still treated with hostility. A Jewish medical colleague snipes at the surgeon's success as a doctor and in his investments. A Jewish bombing victim refuses to be touched by the Christian Arab doctor. The policeman investigating the suicide bombing abuses his power in trying to wring a confession out of the innocent doctor.In his acceptance speech the doctor makes perhaps the film's central point: we have to reexamine our certitudes. Having suffered prejudice, he has come to respect and to befriend his Jewish colleagues and patients. But as he tracks down the forces behind his wife's astonishing double life he rediscovers the Palestinian side of the issue. As his wife's cousin contends, the Palestinians want to live in dignity. Here the film perhaps stops too soon. The Palestinians could have lived in dignity in their own state since 1948. Instead they have refused the two-state solution in the hopes of eradicating Israel instead. A dignity that requires the elimination of another people is something quite other than dignity. Finally, examining our certitudes cuts two ways. As the murders and vengeance continue the peacemakers may lose their zeal. When the doctor reveals his new perspective he loses the Jewish woman colleague who had been such a supportive friend all along. The longer this war continues the more set the old certitudes will become and the more negative any change. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.