The Attack

Although the subject matter is inherently disturbing, it’s hard to imagine any audience remaining unmoved by this mournful tale. Read full review

The conflict in The Attack is less about the reasoning behind immoral behavior than the problems involved in any cursory understanding of it. Read full review

On both a political and a personal level, the film is pessimistic, yes, but it feels truthful, and never lapses into easy cynicism. Read full review

The Attack rewards your patience. Though it's never less than involving, it grows in stature as it unfolds and ends as a more subtle and disturbing film about love, loss and tragedy than we might initially expect. Read full review

Remarkably accomplished and self-confident. In dramatic terms The Attack borrows a page from Alfred Hitchcock's playbook — an innocent in a strange land, delving into dangerous matters he doesn't understand. In political terms, though, the script is unsparing and ultimately bleak. It doesn't justify terrorism, but it does dramatize the rage and despair that dominate life in the occupied territories.

The Attack is most avowedly "about" terrorism. But that's a subject, not the subject. The film, an arresting and upsetting one, is also about love, trauma, and trust, both within one particular marriage and within entire cultures. Read full review

The best kind of anti-war propaganda film, calm in feeling and mood, yet truly terrifying in showing the scourge of our age: terrorism, which can strike anybody, anywhere, at any time. It's also a love story, and a film about having it all. And then in an instant, losing everything. Read full review

Doueiri has brilliantly and simply put a compassionate human face on a part of the world where ethnicity still trumps education, class and achievement, where even the successful face, at best, second-class citizenship in their own country. Read full review

One thing Doueiri didn't get from Tarantino is smirky attitude; The Attack is sad and resigned, but also tender. Read full review

As this film demonstrates in so many ways, the intractability of the Arab-Israeli political situation is, to put it mildly, not easily resolved, least of all onscreen. Read full review

It could easily have veered into opportunistic melodrama. But the director’s focused restraint and Suliman’s wonderfully understated performance keep us grounded. Read full review

Mr. Doueiri creates characters, emotional colors and political contradictions that have the agonized sting and breathe of life. Read full review

The Attack is not just about an incident targeting Israelis. This is also the story of not knowing Palestinians. Read full review

The central figure in The Attack is the very picture of a tolerant, integrated future for the Mideast. When a horrific blast kills 17 people and sends dozens of wounded to his hospital, he's elbow-deep trying to save the victims, even the one who refuses help from an Arab. Read full review

On one level, The Attack is a mystery, but not the kind you think. It’s obvious from the start who detonated the bomb; the only question is why. It’s a question that probably cannot be answered to the satisfaction of anyone living outside Israel or the occupied territories. Read full review

Though director Ziad Doueiri’s uneven treatment of this provocative premise suffers from contrivance and implausibility, it nonetheless arouses profound questions about fanaticism, cultural identity, and the essential mystery of other people, even those we think we know best. Read full review

Despite its explosive subject matter, the movie has been carefully calibrated not to offend anybody. Read full review

The film is most interesting as an articulation of how its main character's initial status as an emblem of inter-religious understanding quickly dissolves following a suicide bombing. Read full review

A gripping, personal examination of a seemingly unresolvable conflict. Read full review

Imagine a male Lifetime movie fueled by Middle Eastern tensions, and you’d have Ziad Doueiri’s torn-from-Tel-Aviv’s-headlines melodrama, one which drops its handsome husband of a hero into a domestic nightmare. Read full review

All the same, as dramatized here, The Attack skirts perilously close to being an apologia for suicide bombing. Read full review

There's nothing new here about the conflict, but the film portrays the two sides fairly - both right, both wrong. Overall, The Attack is thought-provoking, even if it doesn't address how to solve the problem. We'll probably never know the answer in our lifetime. Read full review

At its best when making the political personal, the film’s exposure of a husband’s enduring mystery about his wife’s motivations has a universal appeal. Read full review

Despite a remarkable performance by Suliman, who’s almost never off-camera, events become increasingly pat and implausible, with one explanatory scene played like a shadowy variation on Kevin Spacey’s monologue in “Se7en.” Read full review