Marketic It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Spidersecu Don't Believe the Hype

Afouotos Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Harry T. Yung Despite being inspired by the 1975 Lebanese Civil War, "The Insult" has more universality than you might first expect. Despite the location of the story (and actual filming) being in Beirut, it could have happened in any city populated by two people (or more) of different origins and background. When two of these individuals anywhere else in the world happen to have a run-in as with our two protagonists, a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian refugee, a similar story may well develop.The story is present-time but the protagonists carry with them the heavy burden of history. Tony Hanna (Adel Karam) is a well educated Lebanese Christian doing well as an automobile repair garage owner in Beirut. A bundle of joy will soon be bestowed to the family as a baby girl with approaching due day. Yasser Salameh (Kamel El Basha), although by status a Palestinian refugee, is not doing badly at all, employed as a well-respected foreman of a construction company. The technical legality of the employment may be a tad shady but does not seem to bother anybody. He is also happily married.The run-in between these two very proud men is trivial. The plotline can simply be sum up as escalation of insult heaped on insult culminating in a court case. Tony the plaintiff is represented by seasoned lawyer Wajdi Wehbe (Camille Salameh), and Yasser the defendant by brilliant young attorney Nadine Wehbe (Diamond Bou Abboud) who happens to be Wajdi's daughter.I am not going into the details of the plot as the film is best enjoyed when left alone to unfold by itself. The things to watch for are expected. On the macro scale, it is the abovementioned segment of recent history and how the effect lingers to the present day on the populace. On the micro side you see how human nature is affected by childhood trauma, feelings of being a victim, pride (not necessarily a good word), incontrollable anger. But then there is also level-headed common sense as well as human decency and goodwill.Acting is uniformly solid, from not just the four key characters mention, but also a rather big supporting cast. An Oscar nomination that is good enough to win.In closing, I must mention how I enjoy the closure, not in the courtroom but outside, known only to the two men themselves. This is a brilliant touch of self-administered poetic justice. SPOILER: one deliberately provokes the other to get even with the earlier violence BEFORE delivering an apology which would have avoided the court case in the first place.

Jad Zouain Ziad Doueiri is trying to even things out. He's trying to tell us we're all human. Fair enough, except he's pandering to the lowest level of human emotions and setting it as the norm. As much as preachy movies put me off, lazy movies like these do it even more.The back and forth in the Insult keeps you going, the cinematography is a valiant effort and the actors do a great job; on the other hand the story is flat and never takes off. The ending does the movie the most harm; it leaves you wondering if anything really happened!

Attila Tormus Why do Lebanese movies leave us breathless? Or better question can be "why do movies from the Middle East / made by artists from the Middle East catch us so helplessly?" For years and years, for centuries and centuries, the soil of the Middle East has been harvested with beautiful sunshine and woes for every nation, every group, every society and every human on this soil. No need longer words, the movie 'The Insult' gives not the answer of why questions expecting for these woes but perfectly explains that the woes have been experienced equally, in the same manner, with the same style of tragedy for every human being in the Middle East. Is this movie for peace? More than this, it is for mutual understanding. Where is no empathy, there is no peace. The story evolves around a conflict between two men, one from Christian society of Lebanon and the other from Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon. The court case expands the story and brings the audience into a spiral labeled with "hate and revenge". The insult is an excellent movie, an excellent shot directed by Ziyad Duveyri. All players in the movie amaze us with their performances. But the biggest part of our thanks must be delivered to Ziad Doueiri and Joelle Touma, who wrote the script. We, the audience, have watched many movies, TV series where the plot happens in a court. It is surely not easy to write a scenario, a realistic scenario on a court case. The weight of dialogues, the order of words, and the stream of the case, all need a delicate equilibrium. Very few of scenarios can reach the excellent level in realizing this tough mission. As for the Insult, the pen in the hand of Ziad Doueiri and Joelle Touma suceeds this magic without having any difficulty. There is also another success in the movie, it is to be unpredictable. For the experienced audience, the satisfaction of watching movie has been lesser nowadays because we predict / guess what comes the next. The Insult does not give this comfort to its audiences and keeps the audiences every moment inside the chamber of sweet excitement to watch a movie. The Insult is a movie rightly deserves the statement "must be watched"!

asc85 I was expecting a lot more of a film that was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, and I'm surprised that as of this writing (about 20 reviews), only one IMDb review was negative. I'm sure a film like this in Lebanon is groundbreaking, but researching this film on IMDb, it looks like it didn't even win any awards in the Lebanese version of the Oscars, although nominated. I don't know exactly what is allowed in a Lebanese courtroom, but it seemed there was a lot of unrelated issues being litigated, which didn't seem very believable. The film was just too heavy-handed and melodramatic for me.The one positive thing I'll say about this movie is Rita Hayek, who has the possibility of being a real breakout star in international cinema if that's something she wants. She can act, and is gorgeous.