Movie Reviews : Anti-War Sentiments Fail in Israeli ‘Avanti-Popolo’

“Avanti-Popolo,” the third offering in the Israeli series at the Monica 4-Plex, is the kind of picture that, dealing as it does with the Six-Day War, might be expected to stir audiences on home ground in spite of itself. But it’s too heavy-handed and obvious in its expression of its anti-war sentiments, noble as they are, to travel well.

Haled (Salim Daw) and Gassan (Su Hel Hadad) star as two Egyptian soldiers trying to make their way back to Cairo from the Sinai Desert in the wake of the cease-fire. Their grimly realistic plight gives way to a more surreal and comic mood as they encounter various people, culminating with a lost Israeli patrol that takes them in when Haled, a struggling actor, recites a scene in broken English from his greatest role, Shylock. But as surely as brotherhood between the two Egyptians and the Israelis flowers, it contains the seeds of tragedy.

Writer-director Rafi Bukaee makes “Avanti-Popolo” hard going all the way. Daw and Hadad are not especially engaging in their woebegone Everyman portrayals; at best they evoke unwelcome memories of Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman being similarly stranded in “Ishtar.” The film’s curious title refers to the Italian revolutionary song that the Egyptians and the Israelis sing together without understanding its words, an act meant to symbolize the way in which men are sent off to battle without comprehending why. “Avanti-Popolo” (Times-rated Mature) moves to the Town & Country next Friday.