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I had a friend at the university who liked the trailers. He parked on the couch, watching the trailer after the end of the night, absorbing the peripheral details of as many movies as possible. Perhaps his habit was symptomatic of the diminishing attention of the millennia. Or maybe that was his way of filtering out the flaws.
I do not know if he had planned to take Damascus Cover that will begin theaters on July 20, but I recommend him to stay with the trailer. The film directed by director Daniel Zelik Berk trails for 93 minutes and 36 seconds, offering little intrigue but a lot of confusion. Based on Howard Kaplan's 1977 novel, but remounted in the late 1980s and following the fall of the Berlin Wall to represent a more optimistic political climate, Damascus Cover unnecessarily hides key details , a tactic that functionally slows down the film instead of exploiting anticipation. It's a mysterious movie, yes, but more in the sense that it keeps viewers looking for reliable storylines.
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, the main actor of the Israeli spy infiltrated Ari Ben-Zion, is fine. Ben-Zion crosses West Berlin with the aim of extracting a chemical weapons scientist and his family out of Syria. His alter ego is Hans Hoffman, a German carpet importer
. His character is too often based on tropes, like the groaning revelation that his marriage could not recover after the death of his son. Certainly, a young dying son is an unequivocal and sad development, and he paints Ben-Zion with a sympathetic layer of sympathy. But the way the detail is delivered – during a flashback, with his wife moving away from his outstretched hand to the kitchen table – is an ironic cliché.
He otherwise projects a stoic spy, unshakable, who does not want to deviate from his blanket, despite the confession that, if he had things his way, he would be Hans Hoffman all the time. Can you blame him? Ben-Zion is a bereaved and recently divorced father who recently failed to bring a double agent back to Israel and whose mental health is questioned by a mental health professional.
Hoffman, on the other hand, is smooth. And Hoffman gets the girl. Olivia Thirlby plays Kim Johnson, a charming journalist of USA Today who does not succeed in erasing Hoffman's smile. The two eventually end up in bed, of course, but the hurried flirt lacks sizzle, while Meyers and Thirlby struggle to channel the chemistry necessary to make their case credible. Thirlby is endearing and cunning, but ultimately cataloged by a limited role.
When he does not sue Johnson, Ben-Zion – or, um, Hoffman – gets closer to a wealthy right-wing German businessman, with the hope of getting closer to his target . The interactions do not provide much in terms of a memorable dialogue, but Ben-Zion's chance meeting with Suleiman Sarraj (Navid Negahban), head of the Syrian Intelligence Agency, triggers a necessary narrative rhythm.
The film does not end before a double cross, and a series of twists that are light on the shock value. The lack of continuity and the gentle narration incite little emotional attachment to the characters, and so the big revelations fall flat.
Part of the shortcomings of the film could be attributed to his budget. Berk said that he had just over $ 5 million to work, which made things difficult considering the considerable cast and the fact that the film was shot in three locations – Morocco, Israel and l & # 39; Germany.
The budget forced Berk to be creative. A scene was filmed with furniture from the Sheraton hotel in which the team was staying. Another is filmed in a real dilapidated and abandoned warehouse, which Berk thought was more authentic than anything a production team could have created.
"If I had a higher budget, my life would have been easier.We probably would have fed the crew better food," Berk said with a chuckle. "I would have had more time to develop action scenes … When you're on a budget like this, you're up to the job." This is not an excuse for everything, I am extremely proud of what we have done.
"There is something exciting about trying to do something for less. You experiment, you make compromises that improve the film. " From elsewhere, Berk said, his intention was not to compete with giant studios.He wanted to do an old-fashioned spy thriller in the vein of movies He said that he previously worked with an Israeli consulate, and so Damascus Cover checked all the boxes.
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