Adam Bakri and Leem Lubany (Adopt Films)
Childhood friends are caught in a web of betrayal and political intrigue in one of this year’s Best Foreign Film Oscar nominees. It sounds like standard Oscar fodder, but this film is different in one crucial respect: It was produced almost entirely with Palestinian funds and features an all Palestinian cast and crew; this land, torn by ancient conflict, submitted an engaging and often thrilling movie into the Academy Awards competition. I hesitate to navigate the political minefield at play in Omar, but thanks to director Hany Abu-Assad, I don’t have to. What could have been a taut, provocative political thriller from the Middle East gets caught up in a Western cinematic trope that the Academy rewards time and again: A love story.
We meet Omar (Adam Bakri) climbing a concrete wall in the West Bank to meet his girlfriend, Nadia. Bakri is a muscular ectomorph, with the wiry looks and big eyes of a Gap model, so you have immediate sympathy for him when he’s harassed by a group of Israeli soldiers. But just to make sure you know he’s a good kid, there’s a shot of him playing with a kitten. With the audience thus won over, Omar and his friends kill an Israeli soldier (who unlike the Palestinians are mostly kept at a visual and emotional distance). Omar is taken in and tortured, and given an option he can’t refuse: Lead the authorities to the shooter or we’ll make your life hell.
It isn’t just that Omar falls back on a tale of young lovers, it’s the dialogue these lovers must speak. When Nadia meets Omar after his initial release from prison, she tells him, “I couldn’t sleep after your arrest. I became like a poet. I never knew love could cause such pain.” Maybe a more appealing actress could have pulled off those lines. Bakri makes Omar a likable romantic lead, but Leem Lubany doesn’t generate any sparks as a love interest. A love story without two appealing partners doesn’t have any legs.
Director Abu-Assad has been making feature films since 1998, his last being the poorly received The Courier, an action movie vehicle for Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Mickey Rourke. Before Omar veers off into sheer melodrama, it works well as an action movie driven by nothing more complicated than Bakri running away from the police again and again. Abu-Assad sets these human chase scenes for efficient thrills, and his young lead is a convincing action hero, but you’d hope for something more from Palestine’s Oscar nominee. You’d hope for something more Palestinian as well, but Abu-Assad shows his Western influences even before a character does a Brando impersonation. I checked off plot elements from On the Waterfront, Paths of Glory, West Side Story, and Seven Beauties, just for starters.
Somewhere in those influences there may be an authoritative directorial voice. With one glaring exception, Abu-Assad gets strong performances from most of his cast, and he knows how to put together a piece of entertainment. But the material demands more than that, and the action tropes handled so well in the film’s first half are pushed aside for clumsy melodrama by the end of the film. Omar is at times compelling and at times startling, but like the conflict it portrays, it’s divided against itself.
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Directed by Hany Abu-Assad
With Adam Bakri, Leem Lubany and Iyad Hoorani
Not rated: contains scenes of graphic violence and torture.
Opens today at West End Cinema and Angelika Mosaic
