In the West Bank city of Nablus, the contemplative Said (Kais Nashef) and his gregarious childhood friend Khaled (Ali Suliman) eke out a living fixing cars. After squabbling with a customer, they smoke a hookah on a hillside overlooking the city. They’re later approached by an acquaintance and told that their time has come. They’ve been selected for a mission, and will participate together just like they’ve always wanted. They agree immediately.

Said goes home to his mother and asks about his father, who was executed when he was young for being an Israeli collaborator. She says what’s past is past and to forget it. He then goes to visit Suha (Lubna Azabal), the educated daughter of a renowned martyr who was raised in Morocco. Said likes and respects her, but she sees the conflict with Israel through the eyes of a westerner, not someone who knows the slums.

After making their farewell videos and undergoing ritual cleansing, Said and Khaled are fitted with explosives and shuttled to the border. But an Israeli truck approaches and their contact on the other side takes off. Khaled makes it back across the border, while Said ventures into Israel and almost boards a bus. He eventually makes his way back to Nablus, still wearing the explosives. Khaled and Suha set out to find him and talk him into reconsidering his actions.

Directed by Hany Abu-Assad, a filmmaker born in Nazareth and schooled in technical engineering in Amsterdam, Paradise Now was the first Palestinian film to be nominated for an Oscar. The Academy drew fire from the Israeli Consulate in L.A. and some Jewish groups, who basically said that since “Palestine” had no United Nations charter, it was ineligible for an award (though Puerto Rico and Taiwan have been submitting entries for years). It was eventually announced as a submission from the Palestinian Territories.

From the opening scene, in which Lubna Azabal slowly makes her way through an Israeli checkpoint, the technical pedigree of the movie is never in question. It’s handsomely shot in anamorphic widescreen by Antoine Heberle and is a real movie. The casting is excellent, with Kais Nashef in particular doing outstanding work as our quiet protagonist, seemingly thinking all the time, when in reality, he made up his mind about what he wanted to do a long time ago.

Another remarkable feature of the film was the access the crew managed to get to Nablus, an ancient city with a population of 100,000 mostly Palestinian Muslims. If there’s ever been a movie that shows what it’s like living in the Palestinian Territories, I’ve never seen it. The road closures, inability to get clean water (filtering systems are, according to the film, a necessity) and overall economic and social destitution are captured here, not in an exaggerated way, but by simply pointing a camera and turning it on.

Jumping through hoops not to choose one side or another, like Munich, is the right approach, the more responsible and intelligent one, but in doing so, this movie lacks passion and is definitely slow paced. Politically, it portrays Palestinians living amid hopelessness, but also, suicide bombers as a manipulated lot whose “martyrdom” does far more damage than good. Paradise Now ends ambiguously, with the audience left to decide whether the light Said is seeing is the error of his ways, or the blast of an explosion.

Anyone who advertised this as a political thriller did the movie a disservice. The script – by Abu-Assad, Bero Beyer and Pierre Hodgson – isn’t so much riveting or suspenseful as it is intriguing. Emotionally, I really didn’t have much invested in the characters in the 90 minute running time. However, it is an acute docu-drama that plainly shows why someone would get on a bus and blow themselves up, where they come from, and what people could do about it.

This one’s worth a rental, to be taken somewhere you’ve never seen before, courtesy filmmakers who risked life and limb to get it on screen.