Movie Review: "Omar"

"Omar": A-.  There is an old saying, "He who is not with me is against me."  If ever there was a region on the third rock where that axiom is part of the fabric of the culture, it is the West Bank.  The indigenous Palestinians are faced with Israeli occupation, and the ramifications of that status never leave the consciousness.  The title character in the movie Omar embodies shades of gray.  Whose side is he on?

Omar (Adam Bakri), Tarek (Iyad Hoorani) and Amjad (Samer Bisharat) are young Palestinian men who've grown up under the thumb of Israeli occupiers.  Tarek, the oldest of the trio by a few years, is the brother of young Nadia (Leem Lubany), the object of Omar's affection.  Tarek oversees the men's preparations for the planned sniper assassination of an Israeli military officer.  The time will not be right until Tarek determines that the marksmanship of Omar and Amjad is proficient enough to carry out the mission.  They do so with cool dispatch.  A daytime visitor to Omar's bakery would never suspect his Jekyll and Hyde personality.

Following the murder, the Israelis, who seem to know everything that is going on inside the Palestinian enclave, waste little time tracking down the general whereabouts of the threesome, who for unexplained reasons are deemed the primary murder suspects.  Only Omar is captured and tortured, but he won't rat out his two buddies.  A short time later, he is duped into saying to a wired fellow inmate, "I will never confess." Aha!  His Israeli captors, after hearing the recorded boastful proclamation, deem this to be the equivalent of a confession, and according to Omar's lawyer, the judge will concur.  The only way for Omar to avoid a ninety year prison term is to strike a deal with his "handler," Agent Rami (Waleed F. Zuaiter).  Rami gives Omar thirty days outside the prison walls to covertly assist the military police in bringing Tarek (and Amjad) to justice.

Once Omar is released from prison, his Palestinian friends aren't sure if he can be trusted.  How did he manage to gain his release on a murder charge in just a couple of days?  Omar tells them it was due to lack of evidence. Eyebrows are raised.  Can this be true, they wonder, or is Omar now a collaborator with the enemy?

Meanwhile, as if walking the fine line between his people and their arch enemy isn't enough, Omar struggles to keep his love affair alive with Nadia.  It is difficult for the young couple to spend any time together, as the separation barriers, which are ugly concrete barricades rising twenty-five feet from the ground, not only ring the border between the West Bank and Israel proper, but also segregate one West bank neighborhood from another.  Every time Omar scales the wall to get from his house to Nadia's, he risks being shot.

The plot thickens when Omar finds out that his buddy Amjad also has the hots for Nadia.  Since it was Amjad who actually fired the bullet that killed the Israeli soldier, Omar has tough decisions to make. Pressure mounts via Rami's periodic phone calls to remind Omar that his thirty days are running out.  Rami promises Omar that if he is returned to prison, Rami will make his life a living hell.

It is easy to see why this movie was one of the five nominated for the Best Foreign Film award at this month's Academy Awards.  The movie viewer comes away with a deeper appreciation of the distrust and hostility between the two factions, each of which believing their respective claims to the territory to be bona fide.  The West Bank residents have nowhere to go, and no voice in how their cities are governed.  The Israeli militia seems programmed to shoot first and ask questions later.

The acting by all the principal players, especially Bakri, Lubany and Zuaiter, is nearly perfect.  Lubany, who has beautiful ebony eyes, conveys coquettish charm as Nadia.  On the other hand, her face is a picture of concern that her fiance is a wanted man and possibly a turncoat.  Zuaiter, as Agent Rami, is Omar's counselor one moment, his tormentor the next.  Some of the middle scenes do tend to get repetitive, one of the few shortcomings of the film.

Things have not gotten better in the West Bank since the Six Day War of 1967.  One has to wonder if the situation will ever improve.  The parties' positions are entrenched.  In order to establish peace, reasonable minds have to come together.  But are we working with reasonable minds here, or is the level of mutual contempt too high?