this is movie i think every american should see. it is the story of two suicide bombers. you meet two palestine friends living their normal daily lives. they become recruited by an extremist group for a suicide bombing mission. the movie takes you through the preparations for their mission – both the actual preparations and the mental preparations that each goes through. things go wrong at the border while crossing into israel and they become separated. one maintains his purpose to carry out the attack and the other begins to have doubts.

I subscribe to Netflix and this movie had been in my queue for quite some time. It happened to come in the mail Thursday of last week, just after the “Crisis in the Middle East” (as the networks call it) escalated. Now is an important time to watch a film, like this one, that presents point-of-views and belief systems that Americans won’t see on the nightly news (or any major American news outlet, web, TV, or otherwise). Paradise Now is a compelling and thought-provoking film that everyone, regardless of his or her own beliefs on the issue presented, should see.

I’m not surprised this movie got good reviews just for the subjet matter. However, this isn’t very good at all. It’s certainly interesting, but since it’s fiction, they could have done a better job with the story. You get the impression that they wanted to make it a deeper movie than it needed to be. It doesn’t focus on the parts that really matter.