La tamburina

There are some sublime moments in this six part series, an adaptation of the John le Carré novel directed by Park Chan-wook. None are finer than the scene with the shadows on the ancient buildings at the top of the Acropolis in Athens, but I have to say, Florence Pugh getting rubbed down on the beach or playing acoustic guitar and singing the folk song "Murder of Maria Marten" come pretty damn close. My goodness, she's fantastic here. Watching her act as someone acting as a Palestinian sympathizer to infiltrate their ranks is mesmerizing, and she fully inhabits her character.

There is real tension as this story plays out, with the Israeli Mossad agents (led by Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård) trying to track down a smart bomber (Charif Ghattas) and the organization which also includes his siblings (Lubna Azabal and Amir Khoury). As the Palestinians use young women who have been groomed to plant the bombs, the Israelis try to use the same playbook and implant a young woman (Pugh) amongst them.

The series is a little slow moving and it was probably guilty of being elongated, exacerbated by a couple of the early episodes feeling too talky. It's biggest issue, however, is in how improbable the story is, and its central premise was one I could never truly buy into. As early as episode two we can see why the Israelis have chosen the young woman, but it's certainly not clear why she would choose to go along with it, especially considering her progressive, pro-Palestinian views. To accept incredible danger and put up with a creepy backstory in the process did not at all seem plausible. By episode four we finally see her questioning it all, something that should have happened much earlier, but to have the reason be an attraction to the Israeli agent was unconvincing. It was also a little annoying when she later developed feelings for one of the Palestinians, which felt like tawdry melodrama by the author. There are other elements which didn't ring true, such as why the youngest Palestinian brother would have given up the information as he did, but the whopper is the entire arc of Pugh's character.

I also wondered if the film had a balanced view of the two sides in this struggle, seeing as how the Israeli protagonists are cleverly hunting down Palestinian terrorists, even if the latter are humanized and some of the Israeli atrocities are expressed through anecdotes. It's a mixed bag on that front, and let's just say, felt awfully tidy at the end. There were some really nice bits though, including the noxious anti-Semitism in the British Intelligence officer, and a fantastic dream sequence of the Israeli agent shaking hands with the Palestinian and the latter bursting into flames, saying 'Al Nakba' ("The Catastrophe," referring to what happened in 1948). Overall, worth watching for the production value, and Florence Pugh.