Entertainment

‘Ajami’ worth extra thought

Life is cheap in Ajami, a tough neighborhood in the historic Israeli port city of Jaffa.

The film “Ajami” — nominated yesterday for the foreign-language Oscar — is a complex look at life in the multicultural neighborhood, where Christians, Jews and Muslims uneasily live side by side.

It opens with a boy being slain in a drive-by shooting as he works on his new car. The bullets were not meant for him but for a young neighbor, Omar (Shahir Kabaha), whose family found itself targeted after an uncle killed a gangster.

Now Omar is trying to raise money to pay off the thugs in order to save himself and his family from untimely deaths. Omar’s story is one of five interwoven tales that make up “Ajami,” directed and written by an Israeli Jew (Yaron Shani) and an Israeli Arab (Scandar Copti, who also acts in the movie).

The stories crisscross, going back and forth in time, in a manner that recalls Paul Haggis’ Oscar winner “Crash” (2005).

Characters include a Palestinian refugee working illegally, a Jewish police detective obsessed with finding his missing brother, and a young woman carrying on a secret affair with Omar. (She’s Christian and he’s Muslim, so her father must never know.)

The complexity might require a second viewing, but there is compensation in the realistic acting by a cast of non-pros and the eye-grabbing, hand-held lensing by Boaz Yehonatan Yacov.