The opening scene of Paradise Now involves a young Palestinian woman crossing the Israel-West Bank border.

As one soldier warily searches her bag, others have their rifles trained on her.

As she continues walking after making it through the checkpoint, a loud explosion is heard, causing everyone to bow their heads and scurry that much faster.

Welcome to Nablus.

This is the only world that Khaled and Said have ever really known. And it's a world they're willing to live behind -- striking a blow against the occupation by carrying out a suicide bombing mission in Tel Aviv.

The two friends work at an auto shop in the West Bank -- at least until Khaled gets his temperamental ass fired.

After work, Said runs into his pal Jamal, who pulls him aside and tells him that he and Khaled have been chosen for the first bombing operation in Tel Aviv in two years.

To clean up some personal business, Said goes to drop off the car keys of Suha (the young woman from the checkpoint) -- at 4 a.m. She invites him in for a chat.

Suha's father was a famous martyr (she was born in France and raised in Morocco; she had only just moved to the West Bank). Asked if she was proud of him, Suha shrugs.

In the morning, Said, led by Jamal to a hideout of the militants, meets up with Khaled the next morning.

They are to pose as two men travelling to a wedding. They get haircuts, shaves, ritual baths and a lavish final supper (I suspect the fact it looks very similar to the The Last Supper is intentional).

There is some mild comic relief as during the filming of Khaled's martyr's statement. The camera didn't work the first time, and Khaled got distracted by watching the other militants eating pita bread sandwiches while he poured his heart out.

Things get serious after the mission gets botched early on. Said goes missing, leading to speculation of betrayal by the ever-paranoid militant ringleader.

Suha and Khaled end up searching together for Said. In the course of the search, she learns people are willing to pay more to watch videos of collaborators confessing their sins than for martyrs' declarations.

The two end up getting into a riproaring argument about the pros and cons of suicide bombing, with Suha arguing the side of nonviolence.

As to Khaled's view that committing a suicide bombing on behalf of the humiliated, occupied Palestinian people will send him to Paradise, Suha yells about his presumed destination, "It's all in your head!"

She also worried that Palestinians, by carrying out such bombings, lose the moral high ground. To her, it's a given that the Israelis are militarily stronger, but she has no real plan for achieving Palestinian aims in a non-violent way.

While there is clearly a political and moral dimension to the story, this is also a compelling human drama.

Director Hany Abu-Assad, an Israeli-born Palestinian, co-wrote the screenplay with Bero Beyer, the film's producer.

He filmed much of the movie in Nablus, until things simply got too dangerous in the summer of 2004.

You see the grime, the poverty and the rubble from Israeli rocket attacks. For fun, children kick empty cans (there are no signs of other toys). Cars are old and battered, especially compared to the sleek, modern vehicles in Tel Aviv.

Israel soldiers are shown as a menacing presence; in silhouette, they look similar to Imperial Storm Troopers in the Star Wars movies.

Israeli voices are almost never heard. To a certain extent, this is a weakness of the film. I suspect the director didn't want to make a sprawling debate film (the movie is quite compact, about 90 minutes).

However, with my perfect hindsight, an interesting treatment of this project could have been two simultaneous productions, one by Abu-Assad, and one by his Israeli equivalent. At key moments of Israeli-Palestinian interaction, they could have filmed the same scene through each side's eyes.

That being said, I still really liked this film as is. The characters are well-drawn and well-acted, the movie is fluid and well-paced and doesn't telegraph its many twists. To top everything, it deals with one of the more compelling subjects -- and intractable conflicts -- of our time.

As an all-encompassing debate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it fails. But that wasn't it's purpose -- Paradise Now set out to tell the story of two young Palestinian men drawn by the martyr's siren song. And on that basis, it succeeds admirably.