Clean Sweep (2001)

Don't Believe the Hype

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Blistering performances.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It's amazing how much the landscape of Israeli cinema changed in one decade. Made in 2001 this low cost film was a real breeze of fresh air relative to the existing landscape of Israeli film, divided between the so-called 'bourekas' comedies and pretentious (melo)-dramas, none of them succeeding to break the threshold of real cinematographic emotions with very rare exceptions. The Tarantino-influenced script with its sex-therapy pretext and subtext and its strange and mildly perverse characters some looking familiar from TV comedy series but refusing to enter the well-known stereotypes looked different and they really deserved the interest of the audiences. Yet, the result of director Oded Davidoff's efforts were not up to the promise, and I suspect it is not only the basic cinematographic means that are to blame. The fact that the film seems to have been all filmed on location could have been turned into an advantage with a little more attention to the details and a more inspired camera work. Story telling could have been much helped if a couple of introduction scenes would have explained better the background of the characters, which are a little too many and dome of them (especially the 'bad guys') a little to similar one to the other. Acting is just fair, not above the TV soap or crime series, with the only exception of Yael Hadar, whose magnetic presence on screen here predicts the fabulous role she will make five years later in Neeman's 'Nuzhat al-Fuad'. I wonder why she is so seldom distributed in big screen roles. Over All 'Mars Turkey' is a tentative to fly but never rally takes off, luckily it was only the beginning of a decade which has brought many other better films for the Israeli cinema.

Quentin Trashantino has spawned many imitators over the last few years, most of them more talented than he is. While his influence is most keenly felt in Japan with its long tradition of gangster films centred around the Yakuza, this very entertaining Israeli film easily matches those Japanese ones, and of course, easily tops Quentin. In fact it's easily the best of the few Israeli films that I have seen.The film centres around a team of police trying to safeguard prosecution witnesses from a drug dealer who doesn't care for the wellbeing of witnesses, and has been steadily thinning their ranks. The police try to stay one step ahead of the drug dealer as they protect their last witness. Meanwhile Aya Mastrichi (Yael Hadar), a sexy female Dirty Harry and the most effective of the police officers, is having relationship problems with her insensitive pig of a policeman boyfriend, and the people she incidentally meets while working on the case encourage her to be more demanding of her right to an orgasm. All these different subplots are neatly and hilariously tied up in a very satisfactory manner by the end of this beautifully structured film, with our hero outsmarting everyone.As expected from a Tarantino ripoff, the characters are all humorous, ultraviolent eccentrics, filmed with a particular emphasis on saturated colours to give it that slightly cartoonish feel. Yael Hadar in the lead female role looks very fetching, very much resembling a young Beatrice Dalle, although they have had to put the makeup on with a trowel as Hadar bears little actual resemblance.

The headline is no joke. When a murder witness is being protected by the Israeli Police, including two detectives in an even-parts conflicted and ho-hum relationship, the stage is set for some memorable interplay. Throw in a neighbor's Freudian shrew of a sister, who convinces the female detective that she's more 'frustrated' in her relationship than she previously knew, and good old fashioned argumentative sparks fly. Add that to the witness' armed rapist bodyguard, and the murder suspect's attempt to flee Israeli jurisdiction, in drag, and the makings for hilarity are all there. Enjoy the fast-paced humor with a positively Israeli twist.

I have seen this film twice, and enjoyed it on the second time not less than on the first time. The movie is about an undercover policewoman (Yael Hadar), trying to set a trap to a major drug dealer (Gal Zaid). The plot changes quickly, and as a bonus gives the viewer a humorous look on man-woman relations.The screenplay is based loosely on a book by Limor Nachmias. Reading the book will not spoil viewing the movie, and vice versa.