Zaytoun (2013)
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Reviews Counted: 26
Fresh: 11 | Rotten: 15
It has a lot on its mind, including a timely storyline with real-world significance; unfortunately, Zaytoun's reach exceeds its grasp, partly due to the presence of a miscast Stephen Dorff.
Average Rating: 5.3/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 4 | Rotten: 5
It has a lot on its mind, including a timely storyline with real-world significance; unfortunately, Zaytoun's reach exceeds its grasp, partly due to the presence of a miscast Stephen Dorff.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 208
Movie Info
In 1982, amid the Lebanese Civil War, Israeli pilot Yoni (Stephen Dorff) is shot down over Beirut and is taken prisoner by inhabitants of a Palestinian refugee camp. Among the captors is ten-year-old Fahed, whose father obsessively tends to his prized, but sickly olive tree, refusing to replant it until they return to their ancestral land. Despite his deep-rooted hatred for Yoni, Fahed realizes he can use him to get past the border and into "Palestine" to plant his father's olive tree. The two
Cast
-
Stephen Dorff
Yoni -
Abdallah ElAkal
Fahed -
Ali Suliman
Syrian Officer -
Alice Taglioni
Leclair -
Loai Noufi
Aboudi -
Tarak Kopty
Seedo -
Ashraf Barhom
PLO Fighter -
Mira Awad
Im Ahmed -
Jony Arbid
Abu Fahed, Abu-Fahed -
Ashraf Farah
Khaled -
Tarik Copty
Seedo -
-
-
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All Critics (26) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (11) | Rotten (15)
The resolution is a bit Hollywood, but then who says all films about the Middle East have to be relentlessly grim? "Zaytoun" dares to find common ground and hope amidst political confusion.
Top CriticA trek that is occasionally very unlikely, but moving nonetheless.
It's just all too breezy to have any real effect.
Given how much Zaytoun follows the playbook, the pic's portentous ending is extraordinarily subtle, and will resonate best with those who know the history of the region.
The film's facile message of cross-cultural unity owes more to fairy tale than reality, but the action is slick and the story gripping.
In grabbing for the heart this one-size-fits-all fable sadly ignores the mind.
... never strikes the right balance of comedy and melodrama, and winds up trivializing the plight of his characters in the process.
Lively characters and a series of offbeat events make this movie watchable, except that we never believe anything that happens.
Though Dorff isn't the only thing wrong with Zaytoun, he is still its biggest liability, and the rare case where one miscast role ruins a film's essential premise.
It misfires in tone, depth, and political tact, dumbing down rather than providing new insights into the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The spiritual journey of a Palestinian teenager from a refugee camp in Beirut in 1982 and an Israeli pilot captured by the PLO.
An appealing road-and-buddy movie that could stand as an allegory of peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Eran Riklis' road movie - its title means 'olive' - neatly juxtaposes the beauty of the landscape with the enmities it engenders, locating an optimism in the central relationship that subsequent history ... would cruelly dash.
By suggesting, perhaps too hopefully, that even the most deeply held prejudices can be broken by individual decency, the story has its heart in the right place and is acted with total sincerity.
A piece of ecumenical wish-fulfillment.
The storytelling may cleave a little too closely to Hollywood formula but the beautiful location work and performances add immeasurably to the authenticity.
El Akal delivers a winning wide-eyed performance as Fahed that more than compensates for [its] shortcomings.
Audience Reviews for Zaytoun
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Foreign Titles
- Zaytoun - Geborene Feinde - Echte Freunde (DE)
