Paradise by Hany Abu-Assad - Movie Review Example

It would be very unfair to say that the director is sympathetic to murderers and is approving suicide missions through this movie, he has tried his best to bring out the root cause of why people turn to terrorism, and if we are to stop terrorism we have to understand it's root cause and we have to understand the feelings of the people who have no other option but to blow themselves up to send a message to people who do a lot of injustice to them. The movie has very interesting characters, like Khaled, Said, Suha, and Jamal.

Khaled and Jamal are childhood friends and share good chemistry. They live in a town called Nablus. The most interesting character of the movie is without a doubt Said; he remains very serious and focused on the whole movie. Both Said and Khaled had no concrete work to do, so they engaged themselves in a garage and took care of the cars. This film turned many ahead by being the first Palestinian film to be nominated for the Academy Award in the category of the best foreign film. The film shows why people turn to terrorism, what are the various factors involved in transforming the people and making them do the unimaginable.

Jamal meets Said to prepare him and his childhood friend, Khaled, to carry out suicide attacks in Tel Aviv, Israel. He said, "We decided to answer the assassination of Abu Hazem and Um Jaber's son who died in the bombings." (Paradise now 2005). He motivates Said by saying "If you fear death, you are already dead." (Paradise now 2005). Said had a good enough motive to carry out the suicide attacks, his father was a collaborator and worked for the Israelis, he was executed by them. He quotes "I was born in a refugee camp, life here is like imprisonment.

The crimes of the occupation are countless; the worst crime of all is to exploit people's weaknesses and to turn them into collaborators" (Paradise now 2005). He firmly believed that his father was a very good man but he was made weak by being a collaborator by the Israelis. He wanted to send a loud and clear message to the Israelis by giving up his life. Both he and Khaled prepared themselves for executing the task. Suha another important character in the movie gets to know about all this, she convinces Khaled to back out of this mission and he convinces his friend Said to do the same.

Said plays a trick on Khaled, Khaled returns to his handlers but Said goes on with the plan. With an explosive belt hanging on his body, he decides to get into a bus and blow the whole bus up but he restricts himself from seeing a kid on the bus. "If there is no security for us, there will be none for them either. There power does not help them" (Paradise now 2005). Said these lines and these lines are a good enough indication of what exactly was going on in his mind. He had a motive for revenge, which is very dangerous.

Many more such movies should be released in order to make the people aware of why a normal person becomes a terrorist unless we know the root cause of this, we will never be able to eradicate this evil from our society. The director is a Palestine himself and who better than he could have given us all a good picture of what’s happening in that part of the country.