The Angel

Some reviewers question did this really happen. Well on April 4, 1973 "Two Arabs made an unsuccessful attempt to attack passengers of an El Al plane at the Rome airport. They were arrested but later released and sent to Lebanon." This quote is from the New York Times article "Few Arab Terrorists Are Punished for Hijackings and Killings" published on Dec 20, 1973. There is also a Time article that reviews what is documented in history and what is the movie makers creative license.

I enjoyed the movie. Watch it with some popcorn.

The Angel movie, is the Israeli side of the story that follows Ashraf Marwan (son-in-law of late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser) as an Egyptian arms dealer/diplomat/spy who also worked for Mossad before/during the Yom Kippur war in 1973. Still, to this day, it is not confirmed what he did or didn't do is true. Film, nevertheless, have good-looking production which offers a stylish but a slow-paced spy story that gains momentum just before movie climax. The performances of the cast are OK. As a result, this is not a bad film, but it's little bit flat and too long for my taste. 6+/10.

This is really an excellent film with none of the gratuitous violence that is typical of too many espionage thrillers. This is a true, old fashion 1970s spy story during an extraordinary period of history. I was totally unaware of this story before I saw this film. It's well acted and not over produced, and unless your an Arabic speaker it doesn't matter how authentic the idioms are.

While the story of Ashraf Marwan is undoubtedly a fascinating one and deserves to have a movie made about it, I feel that this one misses the mark by quite a bit. I'm not referring to the trivial anachronisms and goofs (like the wrong Arabic accents, or KC and the Sunshine Band song played before its time) which have already been pointed out in other reviews, but to much more substantial historical inaccuracies and omissions. Main examples: 1) I could find no record of the botched attempt on the El Al plane in Rome which opens the movie, much less that Marwan personally smuggled the (sabotaged) weapons for it or was nearby when the Italian police closed in... seems like an incredibly risky thing to do for an Egyptian presidential aide 2) The movie's ending presents 2 false alarms of an imminent Egyptian invasion as a premeditated plan thought up to lull Israel into complacency. In fact there was only 1 false alarm (in May 1973) and Sadat postponed it due to a Syrian request, not because of some masterful plan of deception. 3) If Marwan really thought a no-win outcome for a war would be the best guarantee for peace, how was he so sure that warning Israel ahead of time would achieve that? Maybe his betrayal of information would be the one to tip the balance and ensure an Israeli victory, preventing the exact outcome he wanted to achieve. Which brings us to the main one: 4) No real explanation or hint on why Marwan would spy for the Israelis. Seems it was done for money. To say it was all part of grand master plan to level the playing field and bring peace to the Middle Easy seems a bit hard to believe. Other than that: it was suspenseful, the 70s atmosphere was largely credible, so overall it was not a waste of time to me.

I have always been fascinated about the 1973 war. Here in Egypt it's considered one of the greatest war and a huge victory. I read a lot about this period in Egyptian history, especially the books wrote by President Sadat himself and the army generals at that time. Also my dad was an army officer so I was able to ask and know a very specific and detailed info.

But this is the first time to watch and see the story being told by the other side. Considering that the director and the majority of the cast are from Israel, I expected nothing less than what I saw.

The movie as a movie despite the true events is good. From acting, to story line, to script to makeup, they're fairly good. The locations and decorations however were absolutely stupid, and I mean those in Egypt and in Libya. Those decorations were done over 300 years ago and a small research on the internet could reveal how they actually look like.

As for the events, which is the big question here, are they really true or not? It's yes and no. The main flow of the events was accurate, I mean yes Nasser blocked naval trade in front of Israel in 67, Israel responded and we. Egypt, lost our air force in 6 hours and lost the whole war on all sides after 6 days. Yes Sadat wanted diplomatic approaches. Yes we went to war in 1973.

But what's not accurate, for example, the way the movie portrayed president Sadat. Also that scene when 3 of his officials resigned and called them traitors that was absolutely nonsense. They, among another ministers, were arrested and imprisoned for a whole different reason. The idea of applying the Shepard guy story was totally not Ashraf Marwan's idea. If there's anything true about Sadat in this movie it was the line when he said "He's completely unpredictable".

The last speech by Sadat is originally in Arabic, presenting it in English was complete foolishness. The speech lasted about 15 minutes and worth to be watched alone.

One last thing, I understand why the director used a cast mainly from Israel, but the accent they spoke was very stupid. Also Libya's flag was wrong, don't know how they missed it along side the Egyptian flag.