Review : In Hany Abu-Assad's masterwork "Omar", sycophantic sniping takes a whole new meaning.

When was the last time a film started and ended with the livid sound of a gunshot? This one does. And the incongruity of this is that the guy who gets fired upon in the sunny beginning is the one who fires the one at the gloomy end. The ones who fire upon him first get fired upon ultimately, and I don't preach. See the analogy? Yeah, 'course you do. The reason I mention this nimble analogy is because this is where Omar eventually arrives. No, this is not the usual point A to point B film, but the plot goes places before it finally arrives at its stunning finale. All of this while leaving you breathless in its wake.

Oh, euphoria has never been more addictive.

Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad weaves a rattling, intricate and often deeply rooted story of friendship, love, loyalty and betrayal in the deafening sound of artillery. Omar, straight up, no sugar, is one of the best films of last year, a film that has a handful of ulterior ideas that are delicately divulged to keep you on your toes. And I like movies that do not let me settle in. There's always something happening, every moment is crucial to be watched and no time is permitted for you to mull over what's going on. Omar makes you its slave, dances you like a puppet on the snap of its fingers and you have to friggin' dance. Hey, I was gleefully doing it.

For someone like me, whose weekly griping about the lack of intelligent thrillers agitates a lot of people, Omar is a godsend. Look, I know squat about the Palestinian conflict, and what I do know is what I read in the newspapers, and yet I still managed to figure out the good guys and the bad guys, at least in this movie. And Abu-Assad serves up a patriot act that I'll not forget anytime soon.

It's not a film where you have to take sides, no. Which means that it's not an overtly patriotic film, though Abu-Assad doesn't let a moment pass without making his unsung patriotism and the plight of the Palestinians crystal clear. But it's a film about what happens when you do takes sides in a conflict. It's a different thing.

Among many other things, Omar reflects the madness and beauty of pubescence. A young freedom-fighter, Omar, scales the spray-painted separation wall to get to the other side and meet his girlfriend, Nadja, the sister of his childhood friend, Tarek, an agitator, and their friend, the idler, Amjad. After receiving revolutionary training in guns, the trio take it upon themselves to kill an Israeli soldier out of animosity. The gunning down of the soldier in cold-blood is promptly acted upon, and they're picked up, savagely tortured and kept in isolation. The usually quiet Omar is tricked into confessing, and given a choice : give them Tarek to incriminate, and he can walk away, clean. It's like Sophie's choice, to give up his childhood friend or be implicated for the gunshot he did not fire.

The minute Omar begins living two lives, you begin seeing things with a little clarity. For eons, we were shown repeatedly that solicitude can soften even the hardest of hearts, but not here, not this time. This is not a world where solicitude works, this is the real world. Omar doesn't beg or plead, he stands silently as he's given instructions, threatened and instructed. He doesn't even retaliate. He doesn't do what you think he'd do, doesn't say what you think he'd say.

This is a good thing, you know. Unpredictability is often a film-director's biggest strength. It's only that Abu-Assad makes a show of it.

More than once, Omar threatens to lapse into needless melodrama, but thankfully stays put. It even has a love-triangle to give it a bit of an emotional whirl, and it's handle gently, like a side-story should be. The tautness of the script is never imperiled. Damn, now I think of it, a lot about this film is rare in terms of quality.

So, yeah. If you want a film to compliment your intelligence and shame your imagination, Omar is your ticket to fantasy-land. You go and watch it, while I dig up this Abu-Assad guy's works.