Even though it clocks in at just over an hour, Yossi & Jagger offers way more character development than you're likely to see in most films twice as long.  The Eytan Fox picture, which is shot so much like a documentary you may mistake it for one at times, takes place in 2002 in and around a military outpost in Israeli-occupied Lebanon on the eve of a planned ambush. The IDF company is led by the no-nonsense Yossi (Ohad Knoller), who has been having a secret affair with a soldier so likeable and charismatic, he's been nicknamed after the singer of the Rolling Stones (Yehuda Levi).

Some of you are probably already headed off on a tangent about the movie being about "the gays" or "the Jews," but please understand there is no evidence of the filmmakers trying to subliminally make you sympathetic to one or the other.  Avner Bernheimer's story could have just as easily been set in a US military camp in Afghanistan, or among two straight people in Israel's very sexually mixed force.  And even though the plot is rather typical, it's told well enough to potentially keep even the most homophobic Zion-haters interested.

Jagger is tired of hiding his relationship with Yossi, who pretty much takes the "like it or lump it" attitude for most of the film.  In addition to not exactly warming the cockles of his lover's heart, Yossi's inability to publicly commit does little to ward off the advances of Yaeli (Late Marriage's Aya Steinovitz), a pretty girl who has been futilely pursuing Jagger for some time.  Just to make things more interesting, there's a fourth soldier (Assi Cohen) who is in love with Yaeli and holds bitter resentment toward Jagger because of it.

Viewers will learn some handy IDF military jargon (like "flowers" and "thistle") and enjoy a couple moments of Tarantinoism ("Who's hotter: Sharon Stone of Michelle Pfeiffer?"), but my favorite part was the cheeky message that suggests a military force might be better off with gay soldiers than women soldiers.

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