THE ASSASSIN NEXT DOOR. Israel, 2009. Original title: Kirot (Hebrew: קירות‎; literally “Walls”). Olga Kurylenko (Galia), Ninet Tayeb (Eleanor), Vladimir Friedman, Liron Levo, Shalom Micahelashvili, Zohar Strauss. Written and directed by Danny Lerner.

   As you watch this film, it will at times have you both frustrated and enraptured, but thankfully not at the same time. It is also, fatally flawed, especially at the very end, at which point a bloody shootout takes place at an Israeli airport, and not a single security office ever shows up. In Israel? At an airport? I think not.

   Mitigating that is the fact that the film is wonderfully acted and beautifully photographed, and the story will suck you right in, in spite of its flaws.

   I am, of course, ahead of myself. Olga Kurylenko (Quantum of Solace) plays Galia, a immigrant to Israel from Ukraine who has gotten herself trapped in the sex trade by a Russian mobster. See a certain potential in her — she is superbly slim and athletic — he “recruits” her as an assassin, a sideline she hates, but without her passport and money, she has no choice.

   Living next door to her are a married couple, but not happily. He abuses her almost every night, and Galia cannot help but notice. Thin walls keep her up most of the night. She slowly and hesitantly befriends the wife, a young woman named Eleanor, played to perfection by Ninet Tayeb as the model of a woman who cannot help but blame herself for her husband’s failures.

   You may think you know where this is going — I certainly did — but I was wrong and you may be too. There is a lot of violence in his movie, and as I said up above, especially at the end. The fantasy aspect of the final scene is overshadowed, however, by the amount of tension that is released.

   But when it comes down to it, it is the friendship between the two women, both in extremely dangerous situations, that will stick with you later, well after the movie is over. Overall? Flawed but fascinating.

   Best line? “You hold gun like little girl. Hold gun like woman.”