Paradise Now
Frederica Mathewes-Green Thursday, 1 December 2005
A review of the movie Paradise Now, directed by Hany Abu-Assad.
In "Paradise Now," a new movie from director Hany Abu-Assad, there's a moment when the character Khaled (Ali Suliman) does a good imitation of a Wild West gunslinger. He faces a corner and then spins back out on one foot, turning toward his pals with a "quick draw" gesture and a grin.
The joke is that he has just had a set of explosives strapped to his chest. He and his friend, Said (Kais Nashef, an actor with exquisitely tragic eyes), are going to walk out of this abandoned tile factory in Nablus and, with the help of paid intermediaries, make their way into Tel Aviv. There they plan to find a likely spot, where one of them will pull the cord that sets off the bombs taped to his torso. The other will wait 15 minutes, enough time for police and soldiers to cluster around the scene. Then he will do the same.
To read the entire article, please visit this article's page at informaworld, where articles are available for purchase from Routledge, our publishing partner.