Film about ‘opening up’ completely misses the mark.
Its comes as no surprise that director Eytan Fox’s moral tale speaks with a double verse – treating the subject of the racial divide that once existed in the past and the one that co-exists in modern day Israel. Treading through the issues that show the current disconnect of a people, Walk on Water filters in on the miracle of forgiveness, but this light-hearted tale with a PG message offers no solutions in its toothache-long narrative with silly moral messages and a fabulously absurd final act.
A cold hearted Israelian assassin is completely thrown off his game – bitter because of the life that was handed to him and distraught because of a wife’s lifeless body and a crummy suicide note. His newest assignment asks for a little payback in the form of a couple of goofy-looking, German-speaking free spirited siblings who might hold the secret as to the whereabouts of their SS grandfather. Finding it increasingly harder to pull the trigger, this former straight-shooter goes through the thought-provoking collection of personal growth items which display how Germans, Palestinians and gay people are all potentially nice people if you leave a little room in your heart.
This contemporary tale about dealing with the past – shows that there is nothing a bottle of Heineken or a day at the beach can’t solve. Throughout this small film there are fake moments of charm, Though Fox concentrates on the message of the film, there are plenty of uneasy, half-constructed scenes as the one where a fight between skinheads and the hit man’s new Berlin friends and how he managed to protect them with an item that would have been picked up at the pair of international airports which reveal how little attention was placed in the means of the story structure.
Revealed in a road movie form, this mind-boggling, far-fetched film with a politically-lite agenda is so off-base that viewers might find better solutions to the entire scenario during their viewing over the one that Fox focalizes on. Fictitious human relations, a gay subplot and a confusion in the tone of the picture hardly push the narrative forward and without the thriller element it’s anyone’s guess as to how this will be marketed to anyone under age 65. Considering that there is more educational value in an afternoon special than in this film, Walk on Water simply sinks to the bottom of this year’s foreign releases.
Viewed in English German / Hebrew (with English subtitles)
