Paradise Now

Herald rating: ****

This ingenious thriller has picked up a clutch of awards including best foreign-language film at the Golden Globes and is looking a hot prospect for Oscar night.

Since it is about two Palestinian suicide bombers preparing an operation in Tel Aviv, the reception in Israel has been predictably hostile.

The Jerusalem Post said it "reinforces the impression that our blood is somehow not as red as everyone else's" and found it unlikely that "a film delving into the inner struggles of [the September 11 terrorists]" would be produced.

At least one has - the Channel 4 telefeature The Hamburg Cell for example - and more will follow, but that is scarcely the point.

The paper deplores the way this film "humanises" the bombers but there's a case to be made that many of the problems in the Middle East flow from the protagonists' willingness to dehumanise each other.

Certainly, the film takes us into the lives and minds of its two main characters - and many others besides; but to say it approves of terrorism is feeble-minded, disingenuous or both.

The film follows the crucial 48 hours in the lives of Said (Nashef) and Khaled (Suliman), workmates in a garage who are recruited as suicide bombers.

We need only know that they embark on the mission in the film's first half-hour to realise that things are going to get messy; to be more specific would be to rob the film of its clammy tension but rest assured it's a white-knuckle ride.

What's most profoundly impressive is the way the film sustains multiple viewpoints rather than resorting to cheap polemic.

One bomber, videotaping his defiant last words for later release, distils Palestinian desperation into a few potent sentences, but the drama of another recording is undercut by a camera malfunction.

The bombers' minders are depicted as ruthless and deceitful rather than staunch heroes and the two main women characters - a love interest and a mother - strikingly embody contrary viewpoints.

Opening on the same day as Steven Spielberg's Munich, which also hints at the possibility of doubt behind nationalistic fervour, Paradise Now (a title of endlessly bleak irony) is a bold, brave and urgent work that deserves a wide audience.

CAST: Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, Lubna Azabal, Amer Hlehel, Hiam Abbass, Ashraf Barhoum
DIRECTOR: Hany Abu-Assad
RUNNING TIME: 91 minutes
RATING: M, adult themes
SCREENING: Rialto