|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Could gay marriage solve the Middle East crisis? Probably not, but it’s unnerving to watch two tough-looking Israeli officers on patrol at a desolate Lebanese border post suddenly dump their weapons and go at it in the snow. Eytan Fox’s film half-heartedly poses the love of its title heroes (Ohad Knoler and Yehuda Levi) as a possible alternative to their brutish CO’s gung ho bellicosity. His cavalier attitude toward his soldiers’ needs (and unabashed exploitation of the women under his command) contrasts with the compassion, open-mindedness, and sense of responsibility shown by Yossi and Jagger (the latter a nickname appropriated from Mick, with whom Levi’s character has little in common). Short and concise and feeling very much like a first-rate television episode (M*A*S*H with fewer yuks, more edge, and no OR), the film finds its real strength, however, in its portrayal of the lower ranks, the soldiers ranging from a Tibetan Buddhist to a frustrated chef to a party girl named Goldie, and in the nagging subplot wherein a soldier grows bitter because the female IDF trooper he has eyes for is drawn to the "different" Jagger. Macho attitudes rear up for a traumatic climax that makes all the more poignant this microcosmic community anchored by the two officers’ all-pervasive but secret love. In Hebrew with English subtitles. (67 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
|
