Reviewed - Paradise Now: OPENING here on the same day as United 93, Paradise Now looks at life and death from the perspective of the suicide bomber. Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) are young Palestinians, friends since childhood who work together as mechanics in the West Bank city of Nablus. Each has expressed the wish that if one is to die as a martyr, the other would want to die alongside him.
When they are chosen as a team to carry out a strike on Tel Aviv, the film follows what may well be the last 48 hours in their lives. There are, as the exigencies of drama require, several complications along the way - family ties, a burgeoning romance with a woman who advocates political solutions over violence, and crucially, qualms of conscience. The film itself is, of necessity, even more complex yet drawn with admirable clarity and evident concern.
Undergoing the same ritual of washing and body-shaving as the hijackers in United 93, Said and Khaled face into their day of reckoning with apprehension. Director and co-writer Hany Abu-Assad, an Israeli-born Palestinian, adroitly walks the tightrope of confronting and articulating the tensions and prejudices between both sides in the conflict, probing the psychology of the suicide bombers and their abiding faith in an afterlife of glory in this courageous, insightful and gripping film.
