Bethlehem

Directed by Yuval Adler

(Not Rated)

***

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“There are lots of good movies,” but this good movie offers something extra, said Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle. Set in Bethlehem, the home of the Palestinian Authority, it provides a “unique and detailed” view of the political situation there even as it unspools a gripping story about an Israeli intelligence officer (Tsahi Halevy) and his 17-year-old prize informant. Though the movie has “a generic, purely functional look,” the work that the first-time director has done with his actors is “little short of miraculous,” said Mike D’Angelo in the A.V. Club. As we watch the teenage informant (Shadi Mar’i) blow the cover on planned suicide attacks even as he helps his militant brother plan them, “every detail of this world convinces.” At times, Bethlehem “suggests an episode of Law & Order: The Middle East,” said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. But that’s not a dig. Like the best police procedurals, this film “has a biblical undertow,” because its drama is about human goodness and evil, and how we’ll never be rid of either.