I've seen a couple of films from Israel like this-they seem to be so fearful of overstating their case that anything other than straight-ahead recording of given reality will detract from authenticity, or believability, or...authoritative presentation of the FACTS. Would it kill them to make a film that's well-written and slickly produced? This looks like a real low-budget job, like something from the History channel, but with unusually good acting. When Isser Harel goes to Ben-Gurion to get the Go-ahead for pulling off the Eichmann snatch, it's shot with one camera, and the script makes sure Harel identifies the prime minister twice for the benefit of the audience(All right all ready, some of us out here know who Ben-Gurion was!). Fortunately, there was enough suspense built in to the actual operation so that the filmmakers couldn't squander ALL of it. In the film's favor, there are enough solid details, decent performances, and convincing location sequences(Heck, all of it seems to have been shot on location in Argentina!) to give it the look, at least, of a documentary, so it could be worse. Five years after this film came out, we got The Little Drummer Girl. I suspect that some sections of this film were models for the later one, so maybe I'm not considering some of the elements that were shown first in Garibaldi Street,and have influenced later films. OK, taking that into consideration, It's worth seeing, but it could have been done better.
Review of The House on Garibaldi Street
