Both manage to not be stupidly anti or pro-Israel, while offering powerful commentary. They show the toll that war takes on the conscripted Israeli soldiers themselves (as sitting ducks for Hezbollah as in Beaufort, or the psychological effects of witnessing the sabra and shatila massacres as in Waltz).

Essential viewing.

There is another fine film I stumbled on in the manner Dan described. It’s with Robert Redford as a frontier man; fabulous too. Anyone recall the title?

Was it “Jeremiah Johnson“?

[Great; thanks; did you too like it as much?]

Swimming against the tide of popular thrillers like “Syriana” and Michel Haneke’s “Cache” that seek the roots of Islamic violence in the West’s own backyard, Italian action director Renzo Martinelli foments a bit more paranoia and panic in “The Stone Merchant,” starring Harvey Keitel as an Italian convert to Islam for whom terrorism is a religious duty. This highly improbable tale, which also features F. Murray Abraham, Jordi Molla and Jane March, has underperformed with Italo audiences in its first two weeks, and will likely find most of its following on DVD.

How is that highly improbable? Apparently Deborah Young of Variety hasn’t been following the news. Even in 2006, when Young wrote her review, we had already seen several converts to Islam that believed that “terrorism is a religious duty”: John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Jose Padilla, and numerous other lesser known converts to Islamic jihadism.

[Spot on.]