Yossi & Jagger

Short but powerful drama.

If the situation has all the ingredients of a shrill, tearful melodrama, the filmmaker, working from a taut screenplay by Avner Bernheimer that doesn't waste a word or a gesture, keeps the emotional lid firmly in place.

What the movie lacks in ambition, originality, and grit, it makes up for in pure feeling.

Although director Eytan Fox focuses on Yossi and Jagger's specific situation, he also casts a critical eye on the responsibility military service puts on all young people who are still in the process of discovering themselves.

The film ambles along at a relaxed pace, well depicting the uneasy relationships among the soldiers and the mixture of boredom and danger that marks their daily existence.

It’s amazing what Yossi & Jagger does manage to relay in its brief time onscreen. And instead of melodrama and fireworks, the film goes the more difficult route of restraint and psychological tension.

A sprint when it should be a marathon, Yossi & Jagger crackles with promise, but much of it goes unrealized. Without the time or resources to develop its characters and overstuffed plot, the result feels like the Cliffs Notes for a longer, more satisfying film.