With his highly awaited follow-up feature, Walk on Water, Fox tackles another thorny issue—the lingering tensions between Jews and Germans in a post-Holocaust era. The openly gay director incorporates a same-sex story line here as well, though this time it’s tertiary to the main action.

Unfortunately, while the ambitious film (a crowdpleaser on the film festival circuit) serves up some fine moments, making the most of its paltry $1.4 million budget, Fox has bitten off more than he can chew. Overreaching in scope, Walk on Water is a disjointed espionage thriller/love story shot on location in three countries—Turkey, Israel, and Germany. Most of the film is in English, though Fox chose to inject some Hebrew and German when necessary.

The gap-toothed plot is tricky to follow. The film centers on Eyal (played by Israeli heartthrob Lior Ashkenazi), a brooding young agent for the Mossad in denial over the sudden death of a loved one. Though he’s normally a ruthless killer, his conscience is beginning to stir.

His secret mission: to pose as a personal tour guide for Axel (Knut Berger) and Pia (Carolina Peters), siblings who may provide clues about their heinous Nazi grandfather who has eluded authorities for decades.

Axel is visiting Pia in a kibbutz near Jerusalem with a mission of his own: to lure her back home to Berlin for their father’s 70th birthday party. Pia is bitterly estranged from her parents for reasons that become clear later in the film.

Though many Israelis would prefer to forget the horrors of the past, the Mossad likes to hold grudges. When Eyal questions the need to hunt down and kill a withered war criminal now in his nineties, his boss (Gideon Shemer) replies, “I want to get him before God does.” So Eyal bugs Pia’s apartment and, after gaining their trust with his calm demeanor and puppy-dog eyes, he begins gently pumping them for information.

While gleaning intelligence about the criminal grandfather, Eyal inadvertently gains wisdom of another sort. The freewheeling Axel, who turns out to be “a homo” (much to Eyal’s consternation), teaches him to loosen up and overcome his demons, embracing tolerance and truth. Not an easy lesson for a macho sharpshooter like Eyal.