This enthralling award-winning film by internationally-acclaimed director Eytan Fox explores the motives, strengths, and, ultimately, the humanity of an Israeli assassin sent to rectify a wrong committed five decades earlier. Eyal is a top assassin in the Israeli secret service. He has killed terrorists before, but this time he is sent to eliminate an aging former Nazi war criminal. During his mission, Eyal meets his target’s granddaughter and grandson, who inadvertently help him uncover his own troubled history and face his demons, while they discover the ugly truth their family has hidden from them for decades. What began as a straightforward mission, has suddenly escalated in intensity and complexity – thrusting three very different people into a thrilling triangle of murder, friendship and fate.An unusual psychological spy thriller, Walk on Water follows Israeli agent Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi, from the superb romance Late Marriage) as he tries to learn from a German brother and sister (Knut Berger, Push and Pull, and Caroline Peters, Schone Frauen) whether or not their grandfather, a Nazi commander, is still alive–but his growing friendship with the pair forces him to grapple with his wife’s suicide only months before. Walk on Water grapples with racial prejudice and homophobia without once seeming preachy; surprisingly, the spy storyline introduces these issues naturally, as Eyal’s hostility towards Arabs and his blithe view of Nazi war criminals are central to his character. Ashkenazi is charismatic and subtle; his bedroom eyes and understated smolder make him something of an Israeli Clive Owen. Don’t buy Walk on Water expecting James Bond spectacle, but the excellent performances, intelligent script, and quiet tension will draw you into this thoughtful and emotionally nuanced movie. In English, with a few subtitled scenes in Hebrew and German. –Bret Fetzer
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May 31, 2008
#1
This is a very poorly done unrealistic movie that disgraces Massad as well as the idea of Judaism itself. If you have a strong Jewish identity and understand what actually Holocaust and Judo phobia are then I would recommend you to pass on this movie. Don’t waste your time and money on this movie!
May 31, 2008
#2
First and foremost I would like to say that this is a lousy gay flick, not a movie about healing the wound of the holocaust. What I got out of this movie was that any one who wrongs Jews or Israel for that matter is gay and is deserving of death. Here the Israeli agent Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi) is an honorable patriotic hetero struggling to forgive the gay German and his gay Palestinian lover. The movie ends w/ Eyal forgiving the gay German but w/ no hint whether he will forgive his gay Palestinian neighbors.
p.s. strange that the Dome of the Rock mosque is on the front cover!
May 31, 2008
#3
This is a pathetic, shallow movie that insults person’s intelligence.
It is quite anti-semitic, by showing Jews not the way they are, but the way Jew-haters want to see them: as heartless bullies, obsessed with vengeance.
The scene of an Israeli Mossad agent killing an Arab man on the street in Turkey before the eyes of his wife and little son elicits sympathy for the victim. We have been told that this was a Hamas leader, but this does not get much emphasis in the movie. The effect would be very different, if they would show first mass murder of innocent Jews done by such types as this Hamas leader.
In this the movie is very manipulative.
All three Mossad agents shown in the movie are caricature-like, made very cruel and unattractive.
It is emphasized that the motivation for Mossad is vengeance and inability to forgive, but the truth is the vengeance is not a main motivation for Jews, but justice is.
If those Hamas murders are left alive, they will cause many more murders, and it is immoral to let them live.
As to the part of the movie showing the pursuit of an old ex-nazi, it is totally stupid and unrealistic, and again vengeance is wrongly emphasized as motivation.
To sum up, this is a sad and un-artistic creation of degenerate secular Israeli culture, done by people without any healthy self-respect and any knowledge about their rich, beautiful and eternal Jewish tradition, which always did and still provokes hate from enemies of civilization.
May 31, 2008
#4
This film is a pro-gay film masquerading as a thriller. While Israel struggles for survival as a Jewish State, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni wants to substitute Israel as a a homosexual haven in the eastern Mediterranean. This film should help and please the Europeans, too.
May 31, 2008
#5
I was pretty surprised to read the other reviews of this film, which is one of the more corny, trite creations to come out the (actually pretty good) contemporary Israeli film industry. I won’t reiterate the plot, which was aptly described by other reviewers, but I will recommend that you not purchase this film. If you happen to come across it and have an evening to kill, it’s mildly entertaining, but that’s about it.
What irritated me so is that this movie touches on important issues that could have been explored in some worthy way – how do soldiers live with having to perform targeted assassinations for the greater good, for example; or, how Israelis feel about young Germans. Unfortunately, the filmmaker refused to really grapple with any of these issues, happily resting on clichés instead. Every figure in this movie is a cliché-and even worse, an unexplored cliché. The Mossad agent is, predictably, tough, manly, confused and ultimately saved by love; the older German generation–evil and formal; the young gay guy – sensitive and kind. One cliché after another – nothing real at all.
In some ways, the only topic with which the movie really does try to grapple is homosexuality. In fact, it’s probably best categorized as a gay film. Even there, I felt that the figure of Axel-the young gay German-is a cutout. His ease with his sexual tendencies seemed to me more an artifact of gay propaganda than a real image of the conflicting emotions that gay people often feel about their identity in a straight world.
The acting is so-so. The worst is the protagonist, Lior Ashkenazi, who looks like he’s working very hard at method acting. The best portrayal is that of Knut Berger (Axel), who, despite having a terrible script, manages to come across as genuinely human and intelligent. Although young, he is a more confident actor, who doesn’t try as hard and it shows. I think he has real acting talent, which may come out with better direction.
Perhaps the real problem is that, as an Israeli, I could spot the fraud that this film really is.