Killing is an everyday business for Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi), a top hitman for the Israeli Secret Service. But a new mission forces him to re-think his life: assigned to track down an ageing Nazi officer, he poses as a tour guide to the man's grandson Axel (Knut Berger), who's visiting his sister Pia (Caroline Peters). As an edgy friendship develops, Walk On Water shapes up as a happy marriage of big political issues and intimate, involving drama.

Granted, it doesn't harbour a twist as eye-popping as Neil Jordan's The Crying Game. But it does raise questions of race, sexuality and violence with the same courage and lightness of touch. Humour gets a good look-in too as Eyal and Axel wrestle with their differences: there's a nice comic irony in Eyal - a crack agent - not realising that Axel's gay. Yet as things heat up, director Eytan Fox maintains a cool head, always favouring the personal over the polemical.

"DOESN'T PUT A FOOT WRONG UNTIL THE CLIMAX"

In fact, bar a contrived skinhead clash, Fox doesn't put a foot wrong until the climax. Eyal's conflict of loyalties is brought to a head, but the tension fizzles and we're left with glib answers to all those meaty questions. Such a shame to end on a low, but it doesn't sink the film: perfectly paced, subtly shaded and emotionally engaging, Walk On Water is a buddy movie of rare depth.

In Hebrew with English subtitles.