Zaytoun is a beautiful, touching film about two hardened souls who need each other far more than they're willing to let on.

| Mar 24, 2020

Spoken plainly, the olives of Zaytoun are bland to the taste.

| Sep 26, 2017

Zaytoun is relatively successful in tiptoeing through the political minefield of the subject matter, and it offers out the promise of hope and possibility without raising expectations.

| Nov 4, 2013

We've ... got to admit right up front: Part of our interest was simply to see what Stephen Dorff is doing playing an Israeli POW.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 24, 2013

It's probably best viewed as a fable that tries to strike a hopeful note amid the many woes of the Middle East, but the blunt filmmaking and the near-sentimentality make it hard to buy into.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 17, 2013

The resolution is a bit Hollywood, but then who says all films about the Middle East have to be relentlessly grim? "Zaytoun" dares to find common ground and hope amidst political confusion.

| Original Score: B- | Oct 4, 2013

A trek that is occasionally very unlikely, but moving nonetheless.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 3, 2013

It's just all too breezy to have any real effect.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 26, 2013

Given how much Zaytoun follows the playbook, the pic's portentous ending is extraordinarily subtle, and will resonate best with those who know the history of the region.

| Sep 23, 2013

The film's facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping.

| Sep 23, 2013

In grabbing for the heart this one-size-fits-all fable sadly ignores the mind.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 19, 2013

Congeniality isn't necessarily honesty ... and Riklis regularly fudges.

| Sep 19, 2013

Zaytoun wants to milk a historical moment as a plea for tolerance; its only accomplishment is to channel the forgettable foreign-film exotica of decades past.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 17, 2013

By the end ... the director's ambivalence is overwhelming, obscuring an important story with undeniable modern parallels.

| Sep 17, 2013

It misfires in tone, depth, and political tact, dumbing down rather than providing new insights into the Israel-Palestine conflict.

| Original Score: .5/4 | Sep 15, 2013

By suggesting, perhaps too hopefully, that even the most deeply held prejudices can be broken by individual decency, the story has its heart in the right place and is acted with total sincerity.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 4, 2013

The premise of this drama about a deal a Palestinian boy cuts with an Israeli pilot may be sweet, but it doesn't convince.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 27, 2012

These characters never really existed, we feel, in any place/time except Wish Fulfilment Land.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 27, 2012

Politically a little watered-down, but the performances are strong enough to make it linger in the memory.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2012