Butler's Cinema Scene

Mosab Hassan Yousef aka “The Green Prince”

“THE GREEN PRINCE”  My rating: B (Opens Oct. 17 at the Glenwood Arts)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Good guys and bad guys are the bread and butter of movie entertainment.  But in the real world the difference between the two can be as fine as a hair — or impossible to discern at all.

Nadav Schirman’s documentary “The Green Prince” is an in-depth dive into a real-world case of espionage. Deciding which side to cheer for could give you a migraine.

For 10 years Mosab Hassan Yousef, eldest son of one of Hamas’ most respected spokesmen, was a secret agent for the Shin Bet, Israel’s shadowy anti-terrorist agency. He wrote of his experiences in a 2011 memoir; now a perpetual target for assassination, he lives alone somewhere in the U.S.A.

This film is both a visualization of his book and an intriguing expansion.  For the film not only allows Yousef to talk about his past, but it also provides a forum for Gonen Ben Yitzhak, the Israeli handler whose growing friendship with and concern for Yousef led to his own career downfall within Shin Bet.

What’s tricky about “The Green Prince” (that was the nickname Shin Bet officials gave to their valuable informer — green being the color of Hamas) is that Schirman doesn’t play favorites. The documentary is 100 percent non-judgmental.  Each man is allowed to explain himself in head-on “interrogations” (these scenes look and feel a lot like Errol Morris’ intense style). It’s up to us to sort through facts, rationalizations, and personalities to reach our own conclusions.

For many of us, that conclusion will be an acknowledgement that it’s impossible to really understand why people do what they do.

Mosab Hassan Yousef and his Shin Bet handler, Gonen Ben Yitzhak

When he was just 17, Yousef was picked up by the Israelis for transporting weapons in his car. As the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a leading Hamas intellectual and orator, the teenager was viewed as a key target for turning. If the Shin Bet could get him to inform, they’d have a source near the heart of Hamas.

In contrasting interviews, Yousef describes his terror at finding himself being tortured, while Yitzhak reveals how interrogators used psychological pressure points to open up their subject, reveal his weaknesses and exploit them.

Yousef says he defied his Muslim traditions and turned traitor because he was appalled by Hamas’ targeting of civilians through suicide bombings and other methods. His motivation wasn’t money (there wasn’t much) but a sincere effort to give the Israelis advance information on upcoming attacks.

Or at least that’s what he says. Who can really know?

Yitzhak, at least, believed this turncoat was sincere. Time after time he defied Shin Bet protocols to prove to Yousef that he was trusted and valued. And late in the game he risked everything to see that his now-friend escaped the fate that awaits all betrayers of Hamas.

At least half the film consists of those head-on interviews. Schirman spices things up with some razzle/dazzle sequences incorporating original video and news footage, aerial photography of the West Bank and other visual effects that lessen (but cannot dispel) the claustrophobia of the basic setup.

But mostly this is a film that will leave you wondering about the morality of it all, about the complexity of the human mind, and about finding friends in unlikely places.

| Robert W. Butler