When Quentin Tarantino picks a film as the "Best film of the year", one does expect a lot from the movie. And, as one would expect, this movie has several elements and quirks that we have come to identify as the imprints of that master auteur himself.The movie begins with the kidnapping of a little girl by an unknown assailant when she is playing with her mates somewhere near the woods. A few days later, a phone call directs the police to the headless body of the girl with signs of physical abuse. She is the latest in a series of such gruesome crimes by a twisted serial killer who also appears to be a pedophile. Our protagonist Micki, who heads the team of cops is convinced that Dror, a shy schoolteacher, is the perpetrator of these evil deeds. However, in the absence of any material evidence to prove his instincts, he picks up Dror with his team and interrogates him quite brutally in a secluded location. While his colleagues remain uncomfortable with the interrogation per se as well as the methods employed by him, Micki who is convinced of Dror's guilt is desperate to make Dror confess to the crimes irrespective of the means employed by him. However, when another kid playing in the vicinity captures the interrogation on video and uploads it on YouTube, Micki is shunted out of the force.
Nevertheless, a undeterred Micki, intrigued by Dror and convinced of Dror's guilt, plans to extract a confession from Dror to clear his name and vindicate his instincts. Micki abducts Dror and in an unexpected twist, both Micki and Dror are, in turn, abducted by Gidi, an ex-serviceman and the father of the latest victim. Gidi takes Dror and Micki to a secluded cabin in the woods where he aims to extract a confession from the schoolteacher and also to deliver some painful vigilante justice. In the basement of the secluded cabin, Gidi and Micki begin torturing Dror to make him confess to his crimes and to identify the place where he has secreted the head of Gidi's daughter as the same is essential for the final rites as per Jewish customs which mandate that a Jew is to be buried as born - complete with all his limbs and organs. Some distance into the bloody interrogation, when Micki starts to doubt of Dror's involvement in the crime, an unwavering Gidi, chains Micki and continues with his interrogation.
The trio are also joined by the Gidi's father, another army veteran, who arrives at the cabin to check on him and upon finding the two captives in the basement, decides to help his son in his mission. The rest of the narrative unfolds in a series of bloody, violent and quirky twists laced with black humour and shifting alliances to a finale that stumps the viewer.
While the movie works well as a first rate psycho-thriller which is tense and unpredictable, the director-duo Navot Papushado and Aharon Kashales deserve kudos for the way they have smartly structured their narrative in a morally ambiguous space wherein the actions of each of the leads appear to oscillate between morally correct and blatantly inhuman. This challenges the moral compass of the viewer and sows seeds of doubt in their minds as the movie brings into sharp relief the hidden animal in each of its characters through the unfolding events which seem to blur the the lines that would differentiate between the predator and the prey. Overall, this is an excellently staged, entertaining, darkly comic, blood-soaked, psycho-thriller which is highly recommended for the fans of Tarantino and Park Chan-Wook and definitely not for the weak of heart.
A VERY GOOD WATCH !!
RATING - 3/5
