Review: The Green Prince
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
A "documentary thriller," with the emphasis on the latter word.
City Paper grade: B
Nadav Schirman’s account of the relationship between Shin Bet agent Gonen Ben Yitzhak and Palestinian informant Mosab Hassan Yousef is described as a “documentary thriller,” with the emphasis on the latter word. Although its primary-source footage is almost exclusively composed of talking-head interviews, Schirman jazzes up the proceedings with stock footage, re-enactments and other post-production tricks, including slapping a filter on a shot of Yousef to make the recording look like interrogation-room footage. The result can be legitimately thrilling, especially when focusing on the psychological chess match between spymaster and informant — Ben Yitzhak clearly sees it as a game, at one point referring to his informants as “toys.” But by limiting the scope to their back-and-forth, Schirman ducks the larger issues, specifically how Yousef could turn on his father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a co-founder of Hamas, with what seems to be relatively little in the way of inner torment; his post hoc rationalizations don’t suffice to convey what happened in the moment. No single film can do justice to the complexity of the region’s history, of course, but this one doesn’t even try.
