Matcollis This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Cathardincu Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

groggo This film starts slow, ends slow, and except for an interesting, symbolic ending and a lot of driving in the Middle East, doesn't really go anywhere. As a movie, its metaphorical messages are too familiar by half.The film opens with a single-shot, non-stop, ten (that's TEN) minutes showing the Israeli-American Rebecca (Natalie Portman) in profile, weeping voluminously because she has broken up with her boyfriend and feels alone and lost in Israel, the country of her birth. We don't have five minutes (even that would be too much); we have an agonizing TEN minutes: wholly one-ninth of the entire film. Director Amos Gitai has made some great films, but he can also be one of the most irritating big-name directors in the world. He doesn't disappoint with this one: the irritation keeps piling up. Only he knows why he makes these peculiar choices in his films. There are long, longggg swaths of often poorly written dialogue, spoken in extreme close-ups in a claustrophobic taxi (symbolism again) driven by the terrific Israeli actress Hana Laszlo, who plays Hanna, a woman who must visit the Free Zone in Jordan to claim $30,000 owed to her husband by a Palestinian. The dialogue doesn't propel the plot, because there is no plot. It's instead a film about outsiders such as Portman trying to understand the age-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. She comes away in predictable futility, because, according to Gitai, although she was born in Israel, she didn't stay there. That's the key difference. This is a very long 90-minute film that doesn't tell us very much, except: (a) Israelis and Palestinians just cannot get along; and (b) absentee or non-Israelis/Palestinians cannot begin to understand the conflict. That, essentially, is what this film is 'about'. And enter the problem: didn't we already know that? Isn't this just a little twist on something we've already seen more than a few times before?

DICK STEEL Directed and co-written by Amos Gitai, Free Zone is the first Israeli movie to be shot in Jordan, and was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Without a doubt my interest in watching the film is for the performance of the luminous Natalie Portman at her birthplace, and one which spotted a bit of controversy and ruckus with their filming near the Wailing Wall. But what is essentially my first Israeli film, I was awed by its simplicity yet powerful underlying message within.The film is bookended by the cumulative song Chad Gadya which grows on you with each passing minute, but yet watching Natalie Portman's Rebecca crying uncontrollably for more than 5 minutes, somehow just breaks your heart, and you start to wonder why so. We find out later that the American had broken off with her boyfriend Julio (Aki Avni) and is now sitting in a cab she boarded, without a destination to go to in a city not of her own, and begets the driver, Hanna Ben Moshe (Hana Laszlo, in an excellent performance which was to win her the Best Actress Award at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival) to take her anywhere. Hanna grudgingly agrees despite having a personal errant to run in Jordan, and brings her along for a ride.Like a road trip, the cinematography presents the film in 2 distinct ways, one as if you're an invisible passenger on the same journey with the ladies, ever present in the passenger seat, with point of views centered from within and around the vehicle they're in. The other view, as Rebecca puts it, is that it's "amazing to see things you read in the books". We explore the scenery from Tel Aviv to Amman, in this road trip, and always for those (like me) who have yet to visit both countries, allows for a documentary styled eye-opener like a travelogue for sight and sound. Uniquely, instead of being satisfied with just showing endless roads and paths, we get compressed time with a double exposure and superimposition of the back- stories of both Rebecca and Hanna, and learn of the objective of the latter in this journey to seek someone to recover bad debts to the tune of US$30,000.Being set in the Middle East also brings to mind the volatility of the security environment and peace agreements in place between the Israelis and Arabs. Issues such as those at the border depicted in the film reflects that clear and present tension that security personnel grapple with everyday, as did the radio announcements made over the impending and credible intelligence of threats. When crossed over to Jordan and meeting up with Leila (Hiam Abbass), we sense a deep mistrust between the characters, even though it stemmed from the root of all evil - money.That aside, the movie did take ample time off to provide a candid observation of common folk on both sides of the border, highlighting their plight to earn a living, and the tenacity and will of villagers who rebuild their lives ordeal after ordeal. Theirs is never to give up.But I thought the payload came from the very assured direction of Gitai, with a succinct depiction of the uneasy tripartite relationship between the Arabs, Israelis and the Americans, as represented by the respective characters in their dealings with one another. Sure they bond over cigarettes, music and a common goal in their road trip back to Israel, but under this short term peaceful existence you still cannot shake off that aged old deep rooted mistrust, as it manifested itself toward the end and really got blown way out of proportion, dragging it out. I felt it mirrored the challenges for long term peace, and that comes probably only as a result of a profound, sincere and genuine understanding of cultures cutting both ways, as Leila casually remarked starting with the learning of the Arabic and Hebrew languages. And the most interesting note would be that of Rebecca's insistence to tag along Hanna and get herself embroiled in the feud between both sides, only to find herself running away when the going gets hot, either from a lack of patience, or having absolutely no clue and surrendering from trying to seek a workable peace process for all.Deceptively simple, with a powerful underlying message. And the wonderful performances by the ensemble team of actresses, made this all the more worthwhile to sit through.

sbekam I had seen a couple of Amos Gitai's movies and enjoyed his work specially Kadosh which was well done and based on my previous impression of him, when I came across Free Zone, I bought the DVD. However, Free Zone is a disappointing movie. No real story line, weak connection between plots, awful sound quality, long meaningless shots, primitive acting (specially by Hana Laszlo when she is milking the cows and hears the explosion and other scenes) and so many other flaws. Opening scene did not make sense and too long, closing scene was primitive as well. It seemed like maybe Gitai wanted to relay a message in this movie showing life and misery of living in that part of the world. But he failed in his effort. Special feature on the back of DVD indicates optional English subtitle. Except a few scenes that characters spoke Hebrew or Arabic, there is no subtitle. I normally watch my movies to the end for if I may miss something but was tempted to turn this off a few times. I would not recommend wasting money or time on this movie.

Lior Khananaev I enjoyed this movie, and Im not just saying that because Im Jewish. But things that really really ticked me off was his editing technique, especially the overlapping just made me nauseous. I need to watch this movie again because I didn't understand a lot of the things. I didn't like the ending, it kind of just put me off. Overall it was a fine movie. But can someone please explain why she ran away in the last scene, like out of no where too. The credits were messed too, with the 2 women yelling at each other, it was just pointless. If this movie had better explanation of what in the world is going on, I would had enjoyed it more. I have to compliment the acting though, it was well done. Also, some of the scenes were just way to extended. This movie is worth watching. Great morality and has deep meaning, but it still could have been done a lot better, especially when your showing tragedy in the middle east.