Quando gli eroi volano

I feel a lot of reviewers missed the point of this drama: this is essentially a story about trauma and how four friends became a brotherhood that were there for each other and had a bond that I am sure most of us would envy. And, yes, some of them did fall out but their coming back together depicts real life well and shows us the meaning of humanity.

And I cannot disagree with a lot of reviewers who said this series was a few episodes too many. And I get the disparity between the emotionality of the mother language of those actors who are Israeli and those who are South American when it is dubbed into English and whatever language you are watching it in your country.

But this is to take from Netflix bringing mainly great drama to the masses. You can't have it every way.

I sometimes think viewers overlook the central theme of a drama series or film by being too narrow in their judgment of the acting, script, direction, plot holes and yes, language dubbing. Criticise these if you must but always bear in mind the bigger picture.

And no pun intended.

In spite of recurring topics and performers as well as apparently one-track approach, this is also a series (in addition to e.g. Fauda, Bnei Aruba, Hit&Run) that caught my attention from the beginning to the end (the inclusion of a distant foreign country, Colombia, just added thrill and dynamism). All the leading performers are also up to their task, with the distress past and present well depicted, without become too effusive.

Well, the ones with far deeper knowledge of Israel may find more oddities, including as regards to the end, but I found Bishvila Giborim Afim to be another solid stone of the Israeli modern television.

This series starts out with some great action and a compelling story line but by episode 3, it quickly slides into mediocrity. Thank goodness I only have 1 more episode! How a production company allows so many talented actors to waste their time trying to make this yarn credible, is really difficult to comprehend. There are just too many gaffes and faux pauses but probably the 2 biggest was depicting trained Israeli soldiers (even if it's been a few years) stomping around in the jungle, acting more like frat boys looking for a place to drink their case of beer than battled hardened veterans and especially Israeli veterans. And I don't know who did the closed captioning (a necessity with the multiple languages), but they were awful. Oftentimes the captions didn't match up to the screen dialogue and there were large gaps with no captions at all. All kinds of wasted potential here.

This Israeli series opens with a group of soldiers in Lebanon; they are on their way home but events lead to the death of their leader. Eleven years later the four survivors; Aviv Danino, Dov 'Dubi' Ashkenazi, Yakir 'Benda' Ben-David and Dotan 'Himmler' Friedman have each gone their own way. Benda, who is now running a restaurant in Bogota sees a familiar face in a photograph in the local paper; Yael 'Yaeli' Ashkenazi. Yaeli is Dubi's sister and Aviv's girlfriend was last seen nine years previously and was presumed dead following a traffic accident in the Colombian jungle. Aviv, Dubi and Himmler fly to Bogota and meet up with Benda. Here they set about trying to find more about the picture; information that will ultimately lead them into the jungle where they will face some dangerous characters.

I really enjoyed this series. It got off to a fine start with the scenes in Lebanon; these were tense and served to introduce the four main characters and explain why they are as they are. Once the main story gets underway there is plenty of tension as the quartet face dangers in Colombia. There is a decent amount of action. The use of flashbacks to show us key moments of characters' lives is effective and doesn't distract from the main story. The cast does a solid job throughout. There are some flaws; for example the characters make a lot of unnecessary noise in the jungle even after they know there are armed individuals nearby who are looking for them; hard to believe of anybody... impossible for characters with military training (apart from the one accidentally drugged). The locations; particularly those in Colombia look fantastic. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to anybody wanting a good drama with solid action.

These comments are based on watching the series in Hebrew/Spanish with English subtitles.

The first half of the series was quite good but I felt the last 4 episodes became very predictable and tedious. If I hadn't invested so much time in getting to the half way point I'd have given up. As long as you go into this with fairly low expectations you'll be ok !!