The way out of their legal dilemma, Yaron and three of his fellows decide, is to ask their sick colleague to claim responsibility for the casualties, since his condition means he won’t be prosecuted. But will their ailing comrade agree to the scheme?

Suddenly, we’re out of this world and in a very different one, observing a five-person unit on the opposite end of the political spectrum. They’re a group of radical socialists who’re in a frenzy over the yawning chasm between rich and poor in Israel, the greatest in the developed world, according to one. Lapid first depicts this curious bunch in the desert showing their militancy by blasting apart the only tree in sight with their handguns. Evidently, their dedication to violent action (or narcissistic self-dramatization) trumps any environmental sympathies they might have.

Closer to the sarcasm of Fassbinder’s "The Third Generation" than the romance of Godard’s "La Chinoise," the account of radical group-think here stresses the collision of personal and political delusions. The band’s one female, a lissome strawberry blonde, is enamored of their leader, a handsome, unsmiling, strangely Nordic-looking guy who seems to have no feelings at all. Meanwhile, she is the object of unrequited infatuation from one of the group’s younger, less Nordic and less commanding members.

While endlessly rewriting and declaiming their manifesto against the rich, the group puts its words into action with an assault on a wedding in a posh hotel where they take several billionaires hostage. The execution of this scheme is, of course, where the radicals converge with Yaron’s unit, which is shocked to find that, for once, the enemies they are wielding their guns against are "not Arabs!"

Obviously, this tale engages many hot-button issues in present-day Israel. But does it say anything particularly incisive or meaningful about their complexity? On the contrary, its ultimate message seems to rest on a kind of glib and simplistic equivalency. "Here in Israel we’ve got fanatical fools on the right and fanatical fools on the left," it seems to say, "and ne’er the twain shall meet, leaving the rest of us trapped in a hopeless middle."

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