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WALK ON WATER Send This Review to a Friend
A suspense film from Israel, director Eytan Fox’s “Walk on Water” is well acted and holds interest despite dramatic improbabilities in Gal Uchovsky’s screenplay.
The story, which Fox has tautly filmed, involves a secret service operation to capture an elderly Nazi war criminal who has been hard to find. He is ill and probably near death, but the goal is to get him “before God does.”
Lior Ashkenazi plays Eyal, a Mossad secret agent, who is assigned to find the target by following a devious path. Axel Himmelman (Knut Berger), the criminal’s grandson, comes to Israel from Berlin to visit his sister, Pia (Carolina Peters). Eyal poses as a tour guide to become acquainted with them and learn what he can about the family and where their grandfather, the infamous Alfred Himmelman, is located.
One of the more interesting sections is the relationship that develops between Eyal and his German charges. Eyal’s bitterness toward Germany is never far from the surface. Axel turns out to be homosexual and strikes up a sexual acquaintance with a gay Palestinian, who resents Israeli policies and irritates Eyal.
After Eyal finally does learn of a Himmelman family birthday celebration in Berlin, where he is sent, he finds from his Mossad handler, Menachem (Gideon Shemer), that his assignment involves more than tracking down the Nazi. Can he carry it out?
Israeli films often pack in too much and stretch credibility, and “Walk on Water” is no exception. One has to believe more than is acceptable. Yet the film consistently is involving because of the story line, the acting and the illustration of a young German generation aghast at the crimes of their elders and parents prepared to put family loyalty ahead of morality. A Samuel Goldwyn release.
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