There is no preaching or pontificating here, just young men with a lifetime ahead of them, forced to wait in hell while their fates are decided for them by men in air conditions rooms.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 6, 2019

Joseph Cedar, the director, obviously decided not to hold the audience's hand. This is good until you get lost; at which point you are less interested in the film and more interested in trying to feel for the hand that isn't there.

| Aug 23, 2018

Cedar overcomes the generic characters and formulaic "which innocent will die next in an ironic twist" plotting by his attention to detail.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 23, 2012

The soldiers feel stuck and so do we.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 24, 2011

Powerful portrait of an officer and his soldiers facing up to what it means to serve in an army of a fallible, democratic country that spins an explosive pyrrhic victory

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 23, 2008

It doesn't come like a full-length, filmed history lesson at all. In fact, it's a pretty fascinating, sometimes disturbing tale about the emotional and physical toll of combat.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 18, 2008

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 18, 2008

Engaging war drama that subtly mixes in several different genres to intriguing effect, though it occasionally relies too heavily on cliches.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 18, 2008

Clearly something has gone MIA in moving from the small pictures into a cohesive big one.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 1, 2008

As long as soldiers have gone into battle they have struggled with the rightness of their actions and their purpose in the field -- no matter how firm their resolve at the outset.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 22, 2008

The film is slow and rather too long (and a bit preachy), but always intense, and its intentions are certainly clear.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Aug 22, 2008

[A] blistering antiwar film.

| Aug 22, 2008

In the end [it] isn't about victory or defeat... It's about surviving another day, doing one's job, and getting back to family.

Full Review | May 29, 2008

Even if they do finally get to leave, the film's dispiriting message seems to tell us, in eight centuries there will probably be a new set of soldiers guarding Beaufort.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 19, 2008

The camera never leaves the beleaguered compound, and Beaufort itself becomes a character in the story, a surrealistic zone of tunnels, bunkers and sandbags, about as far from the possibility of heroism as possible.

| May 16, 2008

It makes an urgent case for the futility of most wars, which serve immediate political goals that afterward don't seem terribly important.

| May 2, 2008

Culturally specific war movie leaves non-Israelis wondering what we missed

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 25, 2008

This Oscar-nominated drama makes excellent use of its location and ensemble cast.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 18, 2008

A fine war picture, one that spotlights war's wastefulness and futility, and humanizes its soldier characters.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 29, 2008

[Director Joseph] Cedar gives a surreal, dreamlike quality to many scenes, underscoring the soldiers' isolation.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 28, 2008