Walk on Water

Walk on Water is a film about an assassin for the Israeli   government.  The beginning of the film has the assassin, Eyal following his target and his family.  He walks up to the man as he is tending to his child and stabs him and injects him with a needle of poison.  The next day at his office, his boss, Menachem, shows him that the assassination is all over the newspapers around the world.  Eyal returns home later that night to discover that his wife has committed suicide.

Menachem wants Eyal to see a psychiatrist following the suicide of his wife, but Eyal argues that he doesn’t need to.  Eyal is now assigned a new job of tracking down a former Nazi soldier that was reported dead but has been in hiding for 40 years.  Eyal is sent to be a tour guide for the Nazi soldier’s grandson, Axel while he is in Israel.  Eyal brings Axel to meet up with his sister Pia who lives on a Kibbutz.  While Axel is learning a traditional Israeli folk dance, Eyal exits out and breaks into Pia’s room and sets a bug in it.  Later that night, Eyal listens to their conversations about their family issues.  The next day, Eyal takes Axel to the Dead Sea and Axel tries to walk on the water and falls into it.  Eyal asks him why he thinks he can walk on water, and Axel tells him if you are pure from the heart he believes you can walk on water.  Later they cover themselves in mud to use as sunblock.  They then hop in the Sea to wash off the mud and use a beach shower to rinse off the rest of the mud and talk about each other’s penis’.

One night, Pia, Axel and Eyal go out to dinner and Eyal asks the waiter where a good party was taking place that night.  The three of them go to the party after dinner and Axel meets up with the waiter from the restaurant and starts dancing with him and Eyal then discovers that Axel is gay and becomes uncomfortable and angry at the idea and leaves the night club.   The next day Eyal picks up Pia, Axel and the waiter from the hotel they were staying at.  Axel asks if they can drop off the waiter at his uncle’s store.  Eyal is angry because the waiter is an Arab, but he does so anyway.  On Axel’s last night in Israel, he and his sister talk about why she refuses to speak with their parents again.  She tells him that she overheard that her Nazi war criminal grandfather was still alive and that their parents had been lying to them about him their entire lives. 

Axel arrives back home for his father’s 70^th birthday and shortly after, Eyal also shows up after listening to the audio tape he recorded.  During the birthday party, Axel’s mother had arranged for the grandfather to arrive and Axel and Eyal see him for the first time.  Eyal quickly exits and meets up with Menachem to tell him that the grandfather was there and that they can bring him in for trial in Israel.  Menachem tells Eyal to kill him before God does.  Eyal arrives back at the party and the grandfather is now asleep in bed.  As Eyal is preparing to inject the old man with poison, Axel can be seen in the background under the door watching him.  Eyal fails at killing the old man because he feels he can no longer kill.  Axel then walks up to the grandfather and turns his oxygen up and it kills him.  Eyal tells Axel he can no longer kill and that he no longer want to kill.  He then tells him that his wife killed herself and left him a note saying that he kills everyone that is around him. 

The next scene is Eyal taking care of his baby and Pia sleeping in bed to show that he has truly reformed his life.  The end scene is of him writing an email to Axel telling him about his family and asking him to come by for a few days so he and Pia can get away.

I thought this was a great movie from start to finish.  It’s not the typical movie that I would enjoy, but I thought it was well done and had an interesting story with a great ending. 

I think the theme of the film is that it’s never too late to let go.