Stock characters; stock scenes

Rating: 4/10 (25 December 2005)

The movie is not really about Jews and Palestinians, except ostensibly. Anyone who sees it will become aware of how generic the whole thing is: just hunter vs. the hunted. The film is composed of repeated and not so inspired scenes that set up and show violence, each scene a little different, each scene a little tense, but each scene 'no name brand' action all the way. Stock characters, stock scenes. No villains. Who's a villain, the fat diplomat-guy sitting at his desk whose daughter plays the piano? Maybe he is, but from the movie's perspective we don't even know him. Not enough depth. No heroes: even Avner is not really well drawn. We got platitudes from his mother, and faithfulness from his wife. You don't ever see Palestinian counter-planning. And to think, Spielberg has been accused for being even-handed, or making the Israeli-Arab conflict into something smacking of moral equivalence. Not true. Had you seen Palestinian strategy at work you might have had a case to make for moral equivilance. But this flick was derivative of lots of other movies. "Capone" showed the possibility of a little girl getting blown-up in a bomb in a more dramatic way than did this movie. We got a touch of Hitchcock, a touch of the Le Carre spy who grows weary of the game. On and on. And it was all too long. And that shot of the Twin Towers? (They're coming here, too!) Scorsese did that in 'Gangs of New York.'