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Some weeks I find it's very rewarding to research the lesser-known titles in a selective release list like the one maintained by the good folks at DVD Journal. Dave Kehr's column in The New York Times is indispensable; he gives glowing reviews this week to martial-arts masterpiece The 36th Chamber of Shaolin and Allan Dwan's version of The Three Musketeers. But what if you're in the mood for something less action-oriented? The Criterion Collection rolls out two arthouse films by Yugoslavian director Dušan Makavejev (WR: Mysteries of the Organism and Sweet Movie) and one Brit boarding-school classic (Linday Anderson's If...). Digging a bit deeper in the list, I wondered about Close to Home, an Israeli film about two young women doing compulsory military service in Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Christopher Campbell was none too impressed when he saw it at Tribeca last year: "Basically it follows the same pattern of the [buddy-cop, action-comedy] genre, but it leaves out the action and the comedy so all that is left is a predictable narrative with no entertainment appeal. Even with its likeable, attractive leads, the film is a lifeless effort." The other reviews I found agreed with his assessment.

What about The Life and Hard Times of Guy Terrifico, originally billed as a "honky-tonkumentary"? Joe Leydon in Variety said it could stand to lose a third of its running time, but it did have "some modestly amusing snippets of on-target satire, along with a few hilarious episodes of self-parody by real-life pop and country music heavyweights." I'm not a fan of mockumentaries, but if you are, you might want to give it a chance. I also searched for information about 1968's Honor Among Thieves (AKA Farewell, Friend), directed by Jean Herman. Alain Delon and Charles Bronson star as two former members of the French Foreign Legion who end up cracking a safe. This is actually the one I'm most interested in, simply because I like the premise and the teaming of ultra-suave Delon and ultra-gruff Bronson. It was originally released on DVD in 1998; the new release is from Lionsgate and features Bronson alone on the cover. But if you're truly not in an action mood, I'm afraid there's not much for you this week on the indie side of the DVD aisle.

Close to Home is a film about love, friendship and policing a large population of Arabs. It centers on a group of young, naive female Israeli Army border guards who seek out companionship where they can while trying to do a good job and escape the icy stare of their hardened commander, Dubek (an entirely convincing Irit Suki.) Looking very much like the Israeli cousins of Claire Forlani and Selma Blair, the two leads are Mirit (Neama Schendar) and Smadar (Smadar Sayar.) Their days consist of smoking, talking, and dishing out petty humiliations like ID checks and bag dumps, all the while being watched by an upper tier of scowling superiors who have seen the worst that can come of such routine interactions. While the girls can handle the onrush of foot traffic that begins every morning and continues throughout the day, many of them clearly lack the physical wherewithal to overpower the problem suspects that occasionally come along. The film's most intriguing moments come when we see several members of the exclusively female guard unit swarming around a solitary Arab who goes off script

Although one of the recurring themes is self-doubt among the Israeli rank and file, Close to Home is aggressively self-aware in terms of its political shadings; each happening that could be perceived as casting an anti-Israeli light is blocked near another event that seems to reinforce the no-nonsense attitude of the grizzled veterans in the bunch. For better or worse, co-directors Vardit Bilu and Dalia Hagar have manipulated the plot so as to place the 'job' the girls do mostly in the background and focus on building a relationship drama between the two principals. Smadar is introduced to us first, conducting a point-by-point inspection of a Palestinian woman in a curtained booth as small as a fitting room. When a fellow inspector suddenly suffers a mini-breakdown on the scene, due to her own misgivings about the validity of the invasive, humiliating search process, Smadar just watches dispassionately. Mirit is closer in spirit to the broken-down recruit; she suffers from serious reservations about her service, but prefers escapism over conscientious objection.