O Jerusalem

This earnest adaptation of a novel by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre tells the story of two New Yorkers, one a Jew and the other an Arab, who end up fighting on opposite sides in the conflict that followed the 1947 partition of Palestine. Its heart firmly in the right place, O Jerusalem proves an uneasy mix of history and fiction, with major characters rubbing elbows with the likes of David Ben-Gurion (Ian Holm!) and King Abdullah. Indeed, the movie’s failure to reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into simplistic personal drama may be its most authentic aspect.