Wounded Land

The Israeli film Wounded Land (2015) was co-written and directed by Erez Tadmor.

This is a tough movie, about tough people and a tough situation. I had trouble understanding the plots. Probably it would make much more sense to people in Israel.

The plots go in many directions. There are crooked cops and honest cops. Two gangsters keep showing up in odd places. One cop's son cheats another cop's son in an informal judo contest. Because the cheater's father is a high-ranking officer, the younger cop won't give his son the satisfaction of hearing, "Yes, he cheated."

Early in the movie there's a suicide bombing in the city. Sadly, suicide bombings are not extraordinarily rare in Israel. However, the response by both the nearest hospital and the police is pathetic. Surely, the hospital has drills for mass casualty situations. One of the plot threads--about racism--hinges on the shortage of doctors. Israel is a small country. Dozens of doctors from other hospitals--in or outside the city--would arrive within minutes.

The honest police officer is supposed to keep order in the hospital with just a handful of officers. Yet he refuses any assistance, and then leaves his post, without calling for backup.

I know that we have to suspend disbelief when we watch a movie, but I couldn't suspend it that far. As I write this review, Wounded Land has a low, but respectable, IMDb rating of 6.8. I agreed with the other reviewers, and gave it a seven.

We saw this film at The Little Theatre as part of the excellent Rochester Jewish Film Festival. It will work well on the small screen. However, as far as I can tell, it's not available on DVD yet.

P.S. The Rochester International Jewish Film Festival always has interesting movies. I'd also like to mention that it's the best managed film festival I've ever attended.

Because of the hard work and expertise of the staff and volunteers, programs start on time, stay on time, and end on time. From ticket purchase to the end-of-festival party, everything works. My compliments to director Lori Harter and everyone else involved.

You know the cliche where the distraught woman or child feebly punches at the big guy before falling into his embrace? That's the one thing wrong with this movie. I just wanted to get that complaint off my chest. Otherwise, the script is admirably creative. There's more incident and characterization than is necessary just to compel the main plot, and the main plot turns out not even to be what we might originally think it is. The actors are believable and help nourish the script's apparent message that our arguments are not with purely and obviously malevolent people but with fellow citizens of a wounded land. The same writing/directing team made a similar point in their next film, Homeport, which is about the world of the dock workers. In that microcosm, the script makes it a little easier to point at the flaws in the system; in Wounded Land it's harder.