When an Ethiopian boy, an immigrant to Isræl, winds up dead at the bottom of a trailer park trash pit, few take notice and fewer still care. Murder is murder, however, and the local police captain assigns detectives David Yanovsky (Dror Keren) and his rookie partner Uzi Asher (Ilan Weiss) to the case. In their ensuing investigation, a veritable guided tour of where Isræl’s outcasts and scarcely wanted call home, David and Uzi come face to tragic face with one mournful suspect after another. As they gradually put the pieces of their case together, the two mis-matched cops come to a tragic conclusion they wish was different, all the while facing up to some unsavory aspects about themselves.
Director Assaf Bernstein has forged a solid, if not particularly earth-shattering crime drama in “Run.” This is a film that mimics any one of a number of gritty urban crime dramas found on American television, minus the flashiness. It’s certainly interesting watching these two cops take turns being compassionate or merely coldly competent as their emerging partnership forms and their mutual respect grows. Similarly, Bernstein has peopled his trailer park with a totally believable mixture of trash, like drunken Russian lout Yevgeny Kissim (Valdimir Friedman), and tragedy, like the slain boy’s mentally challenged best friend Isræl (Boaz Mula). Then there’s Avraham Massala (Shay Fredo), a former star athlete turned local big brother type who may be guilty of doing the absolutely wrong thing for all the right reasons.
Even with all of these things in its corner, however, this fifty-two minute long film just plain feels like a typical television cop drama. And while it is a damned sight better than, say, “Starsky and Hutch,” “Asher and Yanovsky,” er, “Run” makes for a far better television show than a feature film.
