Search - Walk on Water on DVD

Bonnie C. from KATY, TX
Reviewed on 12/7/2009...

This is a FANTASTIC movie. A great thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. A man bent on revenge uses a young man to infiltrate a family to get close to his target. During the road trip there he lets himself get to know the young man and genuinely starts to like him. He starts to ease up on his bigotry towards the boys nationality and homosexuality. Eventually he comes to his own personal crossroads and is forced to make a life-changing decision. Give into his hatred and need for revenge or take a chance on letting the hatred go and actually start to live again? This is wonderful foreign film. I've watched it several times and I love it each time.

A Tense, Powerful Film

H. F. Corbin | ATLANTA, GA USA | 10/07/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"WALK ON WATER, directed by Eytan Fox, is as good a movie as you're likely to see. It is well directed, acted and photographed and has a great soundtrack including music by Bruce Springsteen, Buffalo Springfield and Gigliola Cinquetti. The linear plot is straight-forward and powerful. Eyal (Lior Ashkenzai), in the Israeli Secret Service, is in the business of killing terrorists. After the death of his wife, however, he gets a new assignment: to track down and take out an aging Nazi war criminal "before God does." The Nazi's gay grandson Axel (Knut Berger) will soon be visiting his sister Pia (Caroline Peters) who has left Berlin to live in a kibbutz in Israel. Eyal poses as an employee of "Horizon Tours Israel" in order to get close to the German brother and sister in an effort to find their grandfather.

Although all the actors give fine performances, the movie ultimately belongs to Ashkenzai with his swarthy good looks and moody blue eyes. It is fascinating to watch him grow from a methodical killer to someone else entirely. (I won't give away the plot here.) The director does not shy away from difficult questions: Why are Palestinians desperate enough to become suicide bombers? Is it always necessary to take vengence in your own hands? Are there circumstances when you should leave an old, sick criminal to heaven? Can you love the children (or grandchildren) of an enemy? Does killing breed more killing? Can straight men and gay men be friends?

The movie is ultimately about hope and forgiveness. The ending that takes place at the Sea of Galilee, which is all about the title of the movie, will take your breath away.

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"I don't think I'll ever go to Germany to visit"

M. J Leonard | Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA United States | 04/24/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Director, Eytan Fox should be commended for making such brave, enlightening, and totally compelling film. Walk on Walker covers much intellectual and artistic ground and is easily the best film of the season so far. The film also features such a staggeringly real performance by sexy Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi that viewers will, without difficulty, remember it as the best for a lead actor in quite some time. Walk on Water, although brimming with cerebral ambition is mostly a meditation on vengeance and forgiveness taking on the hardened and tough heart of Israel, where the past and the present inevitably collide in a country that still wrestles with it's demons.

Eyal (Ashkenazi) is a Mossad special agent and assassin with a rough, sarcastic manner. The movie opens with him targeting a suspected Arab terrorist on a ferry in Istanbul. He manages to pull off the hit successfully, but then his supervisor (Gidon Shemer) sends him on an unusual assignment: He is to track down a Nazi war criminal in hiding, while posing as a tour guide to spy on the old man's adult grandchildren. The younger grandchild, Axel (Knut Berger) is in Israel to visit his big sister Pia (Caroline Peters). Pia is an idealistic German émigré who lives on a kibbutz and is in flight from the darker corners of her family history. Innocent, bourgeois, and liberal, Axel and Pia are appalled by the mistakes of their German past.

When Eyal first meets them, he's initially put on edge by their naïve, noninterventionist, and tolerant ways, but as he drives Axel around the historical sites of Israel, he begins to feel a strange affinity for the kindhearted, soft-spoken boy. Driven to find out the whereabouts of their grandfather, he plants a microphone in Pia's bedroom and eavesdrops on their conversations at night. But it's all to no avail; he learns nothing and dismisses them as "Hansel and Gretel arguing." By day, he drives Axel from the Sea of Galilee to the Wailing Wall, torn between strangling this Palestinian-loving peacenik and wanting to get to know him better.

Deep down Eyal is getting sick of the life of a revenge assassin, and when he returns to Tel Aviv to find his wife dead, from suicide, he becomes even more disillusioned with killing. He's also shocked to find himself inexplicably drawn to Axel and Pia in ways that he just can't quite fathom. When Eyal finds out the Axel is gay, and witnesses him flirting, and then later sleeping with Rafik (Yusef Sweid), a Palestinian Arab in a local gay bar, he initially withdraws. But a sudden and reluctant trip to Germany forces both men to reconsider their political and erotic allegiances. The ultimate climax is both riveting and horrifying as Eyal, finally confronts Axel's Nazi grandfather, and is forced to reconsider his life as an assassin.

Walk on Water does a fine job of presenting the lives of young, modern Jews and Germans, who are constantly forced to live under the shadows of the parents' wars. But the film also effectively breaks down the gay/straight stereotypes. In one scene, Eyal asks Axel what sex with another man is really like - it makes for one of the funniest and snappiest gay/straight dialogues ever seen on film. Eyal is a butch, truculent, masculine he-man, but he possesses a formidable intelligence that occasionally allows him to show his feminine and sensitive side. It's absolutely fascinating to watch him grow as he lets down some of his many defenses and is forced to reassess his entire worldview.

Possessed with a taught, intelligent script, and some fine performances by his leads, Fox has made a formidable movie - a substantial meditation on contemporary sexual, social, and emotional politics. Two disparate cultures initially collide, but ultimately find common ground, and while in doing so, also learn to forgive. Fox raises some difficult and poignant questions about this absolution, and whether the Holocaust can continue to be leveraged for moral certainty as it inevitably recedes and fades into history. Walk on Water is thrilling film that is full of astute cross-cultural observations, while also managing to possess an enormous and significant universal appeal. Mike Leonard April 05.
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Lives that Touch and Change

Alejandra Vernon | Long Beach, California | 11/19/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Eyal is an assassin for the Israeli secret service, and is put on a mission to find an elderly Nazi known for his war crimes that has been in hiding, and suspected of still being alive. After the suicide of his wife, Eyal, a man who has never been able to cry, finds his life changing through the circumstances and people he meets on the mission. The award-winning "Walk on Water" is a tri-lingual film so brilliantly written and cast, that there is not a single scene that is not relevant, and it captures one's attention from start to finish.

Lior Ashkenazi is fantastic as Eyal, and Knut Berger gives a sensitive, terrific performance as Axel, the grandson of the old Nazi. Also good are Caroline Peters as his sister Pia, and Gideon Shemer as Menachem, Eyal's boss. Peters and Berger also had a hand in writing the marvelous script. Directed with perfect pacing by Eytan Fox, one also gets a cinematic tour of Israel, and parts of Berlin, which add to the interest of the film.

"Walk on Water" is a psychological drama, as well as a spy thriller, and touches on many facets of human life. Eyal, the man who "kills everything that comes near him," discovers life within himself, and comes to acceptance of himself and others, through Axel, his opposite in every way. In Hebrew, English, and German with subtitles, this film is worthy of one's time and stands up to many viewings, thanks to its taut, intelligent script and superb acting. Total running time is 103 minutes, and though the box says there is a "Making-of Featurette," my DVD does not include it on the menu.
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