The Gatekeepers (2013)
Average Rating: 8.4/10
Reviews Counted: 92
Fresh: 85 | Rotten: 7
Strikingly stark, brutally honest, and rivetingly assembled, The Gatekeepers offers essential perspective on a seemingly intractable war from some of the men who fought it.
Average Rating: 9/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 29 | Rotten: 1
Strikingly stark, brutally honest, and rivetingly assembled, The Gatekeepers offers essential perspective on a seemingly intractable war from some of the men who fought it.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 4,528
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Movie Info
Charged with overseeing Israel's war on terror-both Palestinian and Jewish- the head of the Shin Bet, Israel's secret service is present at the crossroad of every decision made. For the first time ever six former heads of the agency agreed to share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions. The Gatekeepers offers an exclusive account of the sum of their success and failures. It validates the reasons that each man individually and the six as a group came to reconsider
Cast
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Ami Ayalon
Ami Ayalon -
Avi Dichter
Avi Dichter -
Yuval Diskin
Yuval Diskin -
Carmi Gillon
Carmi Gillon -
Yaakov Peri
Yaakov Peri -
Avraham Shalom
Avraham Shalom
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The Gatekeepers Trailer & Photos
All Critics (92) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (85) | Rotten (7)
The film and its talking head participants paint the picture in both broad strokes and fine detail.
Top CriticWhatever one's political stripe regarding Israel, it's hard to dispute the impressions and perspective of the film's six eyewitnesses.
The level of candor here may not satisfy hard-liners of either stripe, but it can help viewers begin to formulate new questions about the philosophical, strategic and moral challenges of conflict, in particular "wars on terror."
Ultimately the movie feels evasive, and its flashy, digitally animated re-creations of military surveillance footage unpleasantly evoke the Call of Duty video games.
It offers startlingly honest insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from some of those who called the shots.
As a political testament, the result is revealing and important.
Dror Moreh's terrific documentary can stand beside Errol Morris's The Fog of War as a cinematic illustration of how human psyches bend beneath the pressure of terrible actions.
A powerful cautionary tale about the concept of security, and how illusory it really is.
In the end, the accumulated stories in The Gatekeepers offer tremendous insight about the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It feels more like it was prepared as a history document for Shin Bet rookies than a documentary.
...a riveting and sobering documentary about Shin Bet that raises important if unanswerable questions about the morality of state-sanctioned violence in the name of internal security.
[Moreh] asks just the right questions, never prodding these understandably private men too far but getting what he needs.
A riveting but depressing history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It's a depressing movie, yet there is encouragement to be found in the manifest decency and reasonableness of these six honest, articulate men ...
The former heads of Israel's military anti-terrorism agency Shin Bet break their silence in this unnerving, eye-opening documentary.
The film, though based on the exploits of Shin Bet, gives us reason to think about the drones that take out more than just terrorists.
Makes for truly bracing viewing.
A fascinating film offering a startling look inside one of the most tightlipped intelligence agencies on the planet, and providing powerful resonances with the US and UK's "war on terror".
A compelling overview of a modern security agency - bred in a moral grey area, organising state-sanctioned violence, but uncertain of the strength of its political safety net.
While memorable in sometimes unexpected ways (1980 head Avraham Shalom's long unwashed nails), there is always the nagging feeling that any revelations are being pushed or sold a little too hard.
Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary is riveting, haunting and depressing in equal measure, offering a sobering assessment of the Israel-Palestine conflict from a unique perspective.
[T]he Oscar-nominated documentary in which the six living former heads of Shin Bet, the ultrasecretive Israeli domestic security agency, talk about their antiterrorism work...
Although The Gatekeepers may not be quite theatrical nor dramatic enough for it to be highly recommended as a cinematic experience, this does feel like a film that really should be seen.
Many secrets are revealed and examined in director Dror Moreh's mind-blowingly fine film. If I have a quibble, it's that he never reveals the most tantalizing secret of all: how the hell he pulled it off.
[An] absorbing documentary, which charts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Six Day War to the presentday.
Insightful, revelatory and profound, Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary combines riveting interviews, archive footage and - yes - state-of-the-art photographic effects to offer a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine issue.
Both journalistic coup and unsettling confirmation of the idea that 'you can't make peace using military means.'
Audience Reviews for The Gatekeepers
Super Reviewer
Super Reviewer
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- Ami Ayalon: We win every battle but we lose the war.
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- Avi Dichter: You can't make peace using military means...
- Avraham Shalom: In a war against terror, forget morality.
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- Ami Ayalon: We'd kill whoever tried to kill us.
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- Yaakov Peri: If we didn't catch them in the act, we'd never catch them.
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Foreign Titles
- The Gatekeepers (Shomerei Ha'saf) (DE)
- The Gatekeepers (UK)
Even the archival footage is fascinating in itself as it documents incidents those of us living outside of Israel have probably never heard of and form a continuing part of the narrative that starts with Israel's triumphant victory in the 1967 Six Day War, followed by it assuming custody of new territories and new peoples. Ironically, that is the beginning of a perpetual headache that as can be seen here can only be managed, not solved. In the end, the only solution these hardened military men can find is to talk with their opposite numbers, even as the conversation is currently dominated by fanatics.