The Paramount + Israeli series represents October 7, 2023

Regarding the scripted narration on the unfathomable tragedy, immediacy is rarely an asset.

It is different for documentaries – immediacy and emergency can sometimes be the whole point – but narrative characteristics or series on tragic events generally require the passage of a certain time to allow perspective and development. Even then, I do not know if there is a decisive element of the scripted media around September 11, about 24 years later, while I can easily point around 15 or 20 films and television programs that tried to tackle September 11 earlier and failed miserably.

If you have to tell the story of a nearby tragedy, I suppose that a key to success is razor concentration. Paul Greengrass’ United 93 supposes that viewers will bring their own context; The film is a relentless 110-minute nightmare that accepts these countless stories of that day could Be said and it is only one of them, without aspiration to open his world. It does not give stories for each passenger. This does not show terrorists who learn to control planes. He also knows that many viewers will not want or will not be able to look at a story with this orientation, and it does not matter.

Lior CHEFETZ Red alertOne of the two high -level scripted projects Israeli products on the first on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on October 7 (and the only one to send Screners to criticism), aims to work at a much more emotional level than United 93.

Awing on Paramount + and Channel 12 in Israel, it is fundamentally propagandist and calculated to produce very visceral and sentimental responses. At this level, it works quite completely and I was a waste by the fourth and last episode, although it is constantly aware that each chain is drawn and that each tear is launched.

But what he does too is keeping his aggressive and intelligently armor vision. He tells four stories in Israel from the morning of October 7, killed from a six -hour tight window, sticking to a real -time structure in his first two episodes and only cheating the chronology with a few flashbacks on the eve of the attacks. He doesn’t ask “what were the terrorists think about?” Or “How did the Israeli government and intelligence services so badly blow that?” Or “Does this justify morally what came next?” The hypothesis is that viewers will provide their own answers to these questions – and that for a myriad of reasons, the series will be inaccessible for certain audiences and a difficult watch for everyone.

I do not honestly know which audience will want a series like Red alertBut I can guarantee this despite irritating and visible occasional attempts to evoke the answer, it is out of breath.

The four stories capture four different experiences of October 7 and four different versions of heroism (or perhaps five stories and five versions of heroism, but two are connected).

We are presented to the head of the team against terrorism, Kobi (Israel Atias), doing security work in the NOVA festival, mainly interrupting the propagation of the party’s drugs. Like Dawn’s Breaking, Kobi leaves the festival, sharing a brief moment with his wife Nofar (Chen Amsalem), a police colleague. Kobi returns home, while Nofar is at the festival when Hamas terrorists attack. Nofar must help the festival -goers, a lot injured and all frightened, while Kobi barely returns home before having to turn around to try to save his wife.

Ayoub (Hisham Sulliman), a Gazan living in Israel and incapable of obtaining legal identification documents, led his wife to work, with his very young son and two migrant workers they picked up on the road. At the Ma’on junction, Ayoub’s car meets a terrorist convoy, with tragic results.

At Nir Oz Kibbutz, Ohad (Miki Leon), the wife Batsheva (Rotem Sela) and three children are awakened by alarms and are looking for refuge in the accommodation room of their house, which unfortunately has a broken door, forcing a predictable and painful result.

In a neighboring village, Tali (Sara Vino) and her adult children also enter their shelter. When he becomes clear what is happening, his son Itamar (Nevo Katan), a soldier, catches his weapon and fled to help, Tali trying to find him and bring him back safe.

Red alert is manipulator, as the clearest in two scenarios in which the suspense is built to know if a baby will cry or not. But it is not sensationalist – or at least it is less sensationalist than it could be, which is not always a clear distinction.

If you have seen the sequences of broadcasting Hamas on October 7, you have seen much more graphic equipment than anything that is represented in Red alertMuch more repugnant crimes, celebrated with much more inhuman enthusiasm by the authors. For great stretching, violence in Red alert Tops just off screen. There are sequences in two panic rooms and a roadside shelter, during which our heroes wait and listen to variations in the sound design. The characters include the audible differences between rockets, interceptive defensive technology, automatic shots and regular shots, and CHEFETZ is at its most subtle when it leaves non -Israeli viewers learn the differences through increasingly terrified reactions.

Even when several characters move in full action mode – marked by an uncomfortably intimate pocket camera work and an excessive but not inexplicable release on drone images – overviews of burned cars and bloody bodies are reduced to a minimum. You just have to horrify the characters and the public at home, but far from the extent of reality. CHEFETZ uses ephemeral use of real surveillance cam images, but not the imagery of Hamas being executed; I found it very effective the first time that we see the images taken at Ma’on Junction that day, but it is not a technique that CHEFETZ is coherently committed. If you don’t stick to it, it might as well not have disturbed it.

The treatment of violence through the show is also a choice, and although it focuses mainly on the restraint, this is not always the case. There is at least a blow in which a character draws a terrorist and the camera lingers by voyeuristic way to make sure that we see blood pumps pumping from the ravaged skull. Later, much less graphically but more extensive, Kobi’s attempt to return to Nofar leads him to an automatic weapon. He proceeds to a series of terrorists with a perspective that looks like a first -person video game, sending a terrorist from Hamas without face after the other in a completely dehumanizing process.

In all, only one terrorist receives a name and more than one line of dialogue, so I don’t even know what the point of worrying about this either. It is one thing to accept that it is not the history of Hamas and that they should not be humanized in this context, but why include the only second order 24-Ca caricature of style as a bad guy?

The character of Ayoub is present as a good Arab in symbolic in Israel, a very limited recognition of the legal status lower than the standard of these people. The character, whose most frequent stage partner is a baby, is significantly and dynamic subscribed, but Fauda The veteran Sulliman is so good that he is able to overcome the impression that Ayoub is a preventive response to criticism rather than a person.

As much as the action, which is closely cut and generally alternates with confidence between the characters frantically on the movement and other characters huddled in claustrophobic spaces, the scenarios are maintained by the performances.

Vino initially does Tali resembles a stereotypical Jewish mother in need and criticism, but the character obtains the best individual arc in the series, going from comics limited to madly inspiration.

In the Nir Oz scenario, Leon’s Ohab is presented as the protagonist, but it is Sela and especially the juvenile actress Atia who sells the devastating choices and the impact of this impossible day.

Atia and Amsalem take advantage of their limited paired scenes to show sufficient chemistry to sell a love story between two separate partners. Above all, they persuade us that each character has something for which they are determined to live. Although Kobi and Nofar apparently have three children, they are kept completely off screen because otherwise the stories would all be “parents ready to do everything they need to their children”. A certain variation is useful.

In general, Red alert benefits from the content of its narration. Four episodes of about 45 minutes each is exactly the right amount for the concentration of the spectator to remain intact, for complete and not distracted investments to build in characters is hiding in terrorism, playing mitzva in horrible circumstances, playing action hero or simply walking on a field, trying to stay alive.

The characters are all based, in different degrees, on real people. I do not always like the inevitable “watch sequences of real people on the closing strategy” in traditional biopics, but I found it powerful here. Even if parts of the individual scenarios always appear to be artificial or at least radically convenient, the end recalls and underlines that these things, and things very worse, happened in Israel on October 7, 2023. What came after must be counted, perhaps requiring more distance to reach the perspective. But Red alert want you to remember October 7.