Brilliantly tense and harrowingly claustrophobic, Samuel Maoz's "Lebanon" is the war film you haven't seen, but should.
Set during the first day of the Lebanon War in 1982, "Lebanon" focuses on four young Israeli soldiers inside a tank that supports a battalion, most of whom we never see. Their commander pops in every now and then to give them orders and splitting, leaving the four young men to argue and bicker over their place, who is in charge, and which of them has to stand guard while the others get a half hour or so of sleep.
The soldiers aren't steel-jawed John Wayne types, or even the more comfortable killers from Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan"; they're unsure, inept, and they know it. The gunner freezes when he has a chance to kill an enemy; as a result, some of his soldiers die. Later, determined to not drop the ball again, he obliterates an innocent chicken farmer.
Maoz's characterization of the men is outstanding. We learn little to nothing about their lives away from the battlefield; we learn that one has a mother who takes Valium and nervously rearranges her son's baby photo album while he's away, and another tells a tremendous story where he learns his father has died, and has his first sexual encounter...with his 11th grade teacher.
Maoz focuses on the men's work, though, and you learn about the men there. They continually bicker, and the tension rises as dead soldiers and, later, prisoners, are crammed into the tank with the men, who have nowhere else to put these sorts of things, and the guys speculate freely on what is going on, whether they're going to be extracted from the situation, then spy on the emergency channel they're forbidden to access to learn the real story. This too is a telling moment as they hear their commander being candid, and learn his quit-whining-and-do-what-I-say demeanor is a facade.
Writer/director Maoz keeps the tension high by staging virtually the entire film inside the tank, creating an atmosphere not unlike "Das Boot." "Lebanon" actually compares favorably to that film overall, though it's not as epic or iconic. It's a smaller, film, but no less telling that war in all its forms, is hell.
