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Foxtrot Movie Review

Foxtrot is a 2017 Israeli war drama film directed by Samuel Maoz and starring Lior Ashkenazi. It’s a very weird movie for better and for worse.

A troubled family find themselves immersed in even more sorrow when something goes tragically wrong at their son’s military post and they struggle to cope with the news that has hit them. This is one of those structurally idiosyncratic movies that feature three entirely different acts in itself. The first one follows the family coping with the death of their son and realizing that he is actually still alive. The second one deals with the son at his military post. And the third one circles back to the parents as they grapple with the new tragic news.

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I actually liked all three of these acts, but the movie simply felt very vague in terms of themes or its purpose. That is my major gripe with it. Yes, it explores the history of one family and their secrets and it can even be thought of as fatalistic in that regard, which is the most intriguing element to it. But other than that, the film never presents any meaningful message to its narrative, and thus I could see why the Israelis were horrified by this terrible portrayal of their soldiers with the movie seeming too one-sided in this conflict, but against their own side oddly enough.

Foxtrot is phenomenally acted across the board, but the performance from Lior Ashkenazi is truly spectacular as he beautifully translated the pain of loss, the frustration and his inner demons that are all on his face. It’s an amazing performance for sure. But others are also excellent, and I really liked their arcs, though the movie can surely become too depressing to cope with. But that story about a porn magazine was weirdly touching in its own right.

Foxtrot is also very well shot, though sometimes aggressively creative when trying to accompany the emotional flux of the characters. The direction is also solid as is the dialogue, but it simply needed a better defined storyline. All three arcs and segments are pretty good individually (the animated segment is also very interesting and artistic), but as a whole it needed more purpose and a better connective tissue. It felt too tragic and calculated in its ending as well.

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Foxtrot is a structurally weird film that is strong in all of its three very different segments, but it needed a better connective tissue and more purpose as a whole. The performance from Lior Ashkenazi is truly phenomenal as he brought every emotion successfully while the movie is also well shot and, again, intriguingly conceptualized, but thematically rather lacking.