Walk On Water

Here's an Israeli film dealing with the Palestinian/Israeli problem, hunting Nazis, assimilation of foreigners into Israeli culture, homosexuality, life and death morality, vengeance, secret agents with a license to kill, and taste in pop music. No wonder its acronym is WOW!

There is a lot of meat here and the writers and director sometimes get a little pedantic in their treatment. But this is not a big preachy Lifetime Special drama. It is an interesting and engaging story line about a member of an "unnamed" Israeli secret intelligence agency given an assignment of tracking down one of the last of the big name Nazi fugitives from World War II. This is a contemporary movie from 2004, so the young guy feels rather uninterested in pursuing the object of his older boss's obsession.

He takes on the cover of a tour guide to get close to the fugitive's grandchildren and just about everybody has various problems with tolerance issues of one sort or another and learns from one another throughout the movie. I'm relating this flatly and it may sound like I'm dismissive, but I liked the movie. I don't want to give away developments along the way, so I'm staying vague on purpose.

The acting is generally very good, especially from the secret agent, played by one of Israel's top actors – Lior Ashkenazi. This guy is a major hunk (Debbie said he looked like an Israeli Clive Owen) and he gets some good dry one liners to lighten things up. Not like cheesy James Bond puns when killing a bad guy... real humor in real settings. The movie uses English subtitles as characters switch smoothly in various settings from speaking Hebrew to German to English.

There is one fist fight scene and some brief male nudity. Kids will be bored.