Israel. Doron would love to just enjoy his vineyard peacefully, but he is summoned to return back to the Israeli special secret unit Mista'arvim to help locate and eliminate Abu Ahmad, known as The Panther, a Hamas terrorist who was presumed dead, but is still alive. Doron and his team, led by Moreno, disguise themselves as Palestinians and speak Arabic to travel to the West Bank, mostly around Ramallah. The unit discovers Abu Ahmad as a guest in his brother's wedding, and in the ensuing chaos wounds him, but he is able to escape. Doron presents himself as a Palestinian to try to go on a date with Dr. Shirin who treats Abu Ahmad's injuries. While on a mission, Israeli agent Boaz is captured, but dies when the planned exchange for a Sheikh with the unit goes wrong. Doron enlists himself as a suicide bomber to reach Abu Ahmad, and thus the Israeli unit is able to track the terrorist unit that plans a terrorist attack with sarin in a synagogue. Walid, disillusioned with the way of the group, shoots and kills Abu Ahmad in his office.
Based allegedly on his own experiences, screenwriter and actor Lior Raz rightfully concluded that "Fauda" will attract a lot of international appeal based on the ever actual interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and indeed, the first season is engaging and slowly absorbing while presenting it all through the framing of a spy thriller. The action and chase sequences are routine, whereas most of the dialogues are disappointingly bland and standard, playing out like some soap opera (especially the subplot involving Doron's wife Gali cheating on him with his colleague Naor), yet the majority of the virtues are created through small observations and clever insights in the specific details of this milieu. For instance, in order to find the terrorist Abu Ahmad, the Israeli agents have to covertly inflitrate the West Bank, and thus spend a long time watching the mirror as they disguise themselves as Arab Palestinians (they apply darker skin make up; they hide tattoos on the skin using make up; an Israeli woman places a hijab over her head and later has glasses with a camera inside as she goes to a Palestinian public bath locker room). "Fauda" doesn't idealize nor presents black-and-white solutions, showing that some of Doron's unit's own conduct causes even more damage and problems, such as the sequence where Doron and his two men are revealed to be Israeli agents at a Palestinian wedding, the guests surround them, so Doron makes the disastrous decision to take the bride as a hostage / living shield, the groom inevitably wants to intervene and gets shot. Later on, to avenge her husband's death, the bride accepts to perpetrate a terrorist act in a Israeli night bar, reaching the full circle of violence. An interesting dialogue by Abu Ahmad is found in episode 1.11 where he reveals his plan to perpetrate a sarin terrorist attack which would force Israel to retaliate with "such war crimes that other Muslim countries will be forced to intervene, and will then destroy the Zionist entity". The suspense and the fight between various factions trying to outsmart each other are the virtues of this series, which is luckily concise enough to captivate the audiences.
Grade:+++
No comments:
Post a Comment