The film opens with startling imagery as the camera introduces, in a unique and narratively jarring way, the four soldiers who will fight the battle of Hill 24. Inside a barrack, we see a commander take the roll call of the four, seated in his presence, while the viewer sees each one of them dead in a flash from 12 hours later. Knowing the fates of these four soldiers immediately heightens tension and suspense as to how their fates will come about. After the startling introduction, the four prepare for the battle, outlined by the commander. Basically, when the cease fire is called whoever holds certain territories will be granted them as the settlement of the boundaries. The Israelis must take Hill 24 to ensure them the road leading to Jerusalem. To get their soldiers there, they must go that night, under cover of darkness.
The four soldiers leading the defense are an eclectic group, comprised of an Irishman (Edward Mulhare), an American (Michael Wager), a Yemenite (Margalit Oved, the sole female of the group), and an Israeli (Arich Lavie). The Irishman, Finnegan, comes to the group via working as a spy with the British during the days of Mandatory Palestine. At that time he was tasked with surveilling and apprehending members of the Zionist resistance but after falling in love with one of his targets, Miriam (the beautiful Haya Harareet, most famous in the role of Esther in William Wyler's Ben-Hur, 1959), he comes to see their side. When she is apprehended and led to believe her relationship with Finnegan was nothing more than a setup, he feels obligated to fight to prove his true intentions. Each of the others has his or her story related in flashback before the mission to take the hill is engaged, a mission the viewer knows from the first frames of the movie will end in their death.
Hill 24 Doesn't Answer was entered into competition at the Cannes Film Festival and while it didn't win the top prize, it made a favorable impact. Directed by Thorold Dickinson, the film has brisk pace and a solid sense of suspense and tension. The low budget surely hampered Dickinson to a degree but his talents (he directed one of the all-time great ghost stories, The Queen of Spades, 1949) were such that the movie still works very well.
The dialogue of the film is mainly English with only a handful of lines coming in Hebrew and contains more than its share of cliché ("You're going soft, Finnegan!" "He wants what we all want, to live in peace and quiet. Is that too much to ask?") but what it avoids makes it more curious than what it provides. What it avoids is any quick, easy demonization of the other side, which is a good thing, but it also leaves out any real discussion of the intensely heated politics behind it all. The story is presented as a fight for statehood and recognition without ever really getting into the powerfully felt emotions and millennia old conflicts between the Arabs and Jews.
The first movie to come out of Israel probably couldn't have hoped to boldly and candidly drive a conversation about ancient divides in the Holy Land without upsetting a great many people. Still, what it does provide, however sanitized, is a taut war thriller about a group of soldiers fighting for what they believe in. Hill 24 Doesn't Answer is a good first effort for the Israeli film industry and succeeds while it chooses to avoid a hard conversation in favor of a celebration of courage and perseverance.
Director: Thorold Dickinson
Writers: Zvi Kolitz (story and screenplay), Peter Frye (screenplay)
Producer: Thorold Dickinson, Peter Frye, Zvi Kolitz, Jack Padwa
Music: Paul Ben Haim
Cinematographer: Gerald Gibbs
Film Editor: Joanna Dickinson, Thorold Dickinson
Art Director: Joseph Carl
Cast: Edward Mulhare (James Finnegan), Michael Wager (Allan Goodman), Margalit Oved (Esther Hadassi), Arich Lavie (David Airam), Michael Shillo (Capt. Yehuda Berger), Haya Harareet (Miriam Miszrahi), Eric Greene (Agent Browning), Stanley Preston (Chief British Agent Lawson), Zalman Lebiush (The Rabbi), Azaria Rapaport (German Mercenary)
By Greg Ferrara
