The Green Prince has arrived in theaters at a spectacularly bad time. Israeli/Palestinian relations are always a touchy subject, but this documentary is coming out just a few weeks after the latest Israeli bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip wrapped up. More than two thousand people are dead, most of them Palestinian civilians, around a quarter of them children. This is a nasty conflict, and a movie that uses it as the backdrop for a spy thriller comes across as tasteless. It’s not even that it contains an overt political affiliation for either side (though it’s slanted towards Israel), since its main message is “Can’t we all just get along?” Rather, it’s the message itself, which is dumbly simplistic, that’s offensive.

In the narrow view of the Israeli/Palestinian tensions as presented by the doc, the battle is specifically between Hamas and the Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service. With this kind of setup, things seem pretty clear-cut: there’s terrorists on one side and good guys on the other. Torn between these two worlds is Mosab Yousef. Mosab is the oldest son of Hassan Yousef, one of the founders of Hamas, and thus grew up with an immense hatred of Israel. But when a gun-running operation landed him in Israeli detention, Mosab was struck by how humane their practices were in comparison to those of Hamas. Already somewhat disillusioned with his cause due to its tactics, he approached the Shin Bet with the offer to become their informant.

The Green Prince is undeniably put together well. Archival and surveillance footage and reenactment are combined seamlessly, and it’s all edited and shot like a Hollywood thriller. Acting counter to documentary conventions, there are only two interviewees in the film: Mosab and his handler within the Shin Bet, Gonen Ben Yitzhak. Their unlikely friendship gives the movie an emotional core, even if it’s also the root of its off-putting “peace is easy” idea. Even though I’m generally in favor of docs abandoning traditional formats, this is one case where the slickness of the production almost gets in the way of the story. It would be one thing if the film were saying something about how the characters might be filtering their self-perceptions, telling themselves that they’re living out a wild spy movie, but The Green Prince is 100% behind that interpretation.

I rarely find myself saying this, but Mosab’s story, which is undeniably fascinating (he informed on Hamas for 10 years, and the deception included numerous breathtaking stunts of guile), might actually be better off told in a fiction film. Wrested away from the control of Mosab and Gonen, and filtered through the sensibilities of a director who could properly contextualize their story in the wider Israel/Palestine situation and approach it with a non-exploitative touch, it could make for a relentless, timely suspense film. But The Green Prince is a series of cringe-inducing moments. It’s probably well-intentioned and unquestionably well-made, but Hollywood convention and the real subjects of politically and morally fraught territory is a toxic combination.

Grade: C