An effort to reconcile some of the differences between Israelis and Palestinians, Eran Riklis's CUP FINAL uses the cliche of a beleagured platoon with a POW whom they eventually come to accept as a fellow pawn in the larger political struggle. The catalyst for this realization is a shared
love for soccer and a devotion to the Italian national team in the World Cup match.
Cohen (Moshe Ivgi) is far from a ferocious warrior; he has trouble buckling his helmet's chin strap and laments his army's Lebanese incursion as undue interference with his Plans to attend the match in Barcelona. Heightening the irony is a brief aside in which a fellow reservist admonishes him for
voting Conservative. Soon, however, this Israeli Sad Sack has a lot more to worry about; Cohen and his far tougher commander are captured by a wildly heterogenous crew. While the Muslim leader Ziad (Muhamed Bakri), has all the earmarks of a born leader, tough and lean, laconic and sensible, and
his second-in-command, Omar (Suheil Haddad) looks the typical politicized intellectual with long hair and mended glasses, the others range from a very devout and implausibly fat farmer to a brooding, belligerent fighter whom only Ziad seems able to control.
In their effort to get to Beirut, they have to dodge the road-bound Israeli patrols and occasional unknown and unseen snipers, as well. In one firefight they lose their higher-ranking prisoner and one of their own too. In the casual conversations between panicky situations, they learn that Cohen
is a soccer fan and that he shares an enthusiasm for things Italian with Ziad and Omar who had been university students in Italy before joining the PLO. It also appears that one of the fighters, George, is a Christian-Marxist who uses his Crucifix to gain entry to an Israeli Army medical site to
get needed supplies.
Trained at England's National Film and Television School, Riklis highlights some of the amusing sequences in Eyal Halfon's screenplay. Besides the Israeli Army doctor who thinks he remembers Omar from an Odessa medical school, there is the Lebanese torn between his devotion to the rules of
hospitality and his fear at harboring armed guerillas. Later, at a party to celebrate a relative's marriage, one of the female guests naturally chooses Cohen as her dance partner, while an Israeli patrol, guns at the ready, scans the festivities.
As they near Beirut, tensions increase and their idle games at soccer or billiards take on a nasty tone. The lone zealot manages to capture Cohen alone and proposes to torture him, but is met by the genuine embarrassment of the others at this show of hatred. During the final approach to the city,
Cohen is freed by his own side, while Ziad is wounded. The final scene shows Cohen weeping at the deaths of people he had learned are not so different from himself.
Director Riklis and screenwriter Halfon have refurbished an old format. THE LOST PATROL, the basic model, dates back to 1934, while the character study of POW and captors was a theme in both the Soviet THE FORTY-FIRST and Hollywood's own COUNTER-ATTACK. CUP FINAL's sole strength lies in its
confrontation of an Israeli Everyman with a heroic Palestinian, proof of the director's sense of drama and fair play. (Profanity.) leave a comment