The film tries hard to be a caper flick but somehow there's something missing. It's made along the same lines as 1979's "Going in Style" and it's 2017 remake, but those films had well known American actors you could count on for good doses of geriatric humor. This one adds a twelve year old 'stupid' genius to the mix, a socially inept pre-teen (Gil Blank) who's out to avenge the death of his father by teaming up with the grandfather (Sasson Gabai) he never knew, ditto a British uncle (Patrick Stewart),and the grandfather's best friend (Moni Moshonov) from their underground days before Israel became a country. You're talking pretty old here, it's surprising in some scenes that these guys could still stand up. Stewart is a pleasant surprise though, as he carries on with the females at the nursing home with festive song and dance, a side to the actor that I haven't seen before. He was pretty entertaining. The bank job they attempt to pull off goes through a number of permutations in the planning, which we witness as flashback or flash forward scenes as the story unfolds. Though the title of the film doesn't have much bearing to the story for the most part, it's later explained that because the Jerusalem bank the quartet are robbing generally carries only twenty to thirty thousand shekels on hand, that it can be considered a 'white elephant'. Checking the math on that, it translates to about $5,700 - $8,500 American dollars, not a whole lot to get excited about, or even take care of Jonathan's mom (Yaël Abecassis) for any length of time, the original premise for planning the heist. Personally, I was surprised that Jonathan managed to stay on track once he found out his mother was carrying on with the bank manager. Talk about a rude awakening.

The popular comedies mixed with Mediterranean melodramas got a name of their own in the Israeli cinema of the 70s: 'bourekas movies'. 'Bourekas' are the local flavor of the Turkish pastries. The genre was dominant while the Israeli cinema was in its teens age, decreased in popularity with the maturity but never really died. We may find traces of it in some of the more recent successes, and with 'Hunting Elephants' which combines the genre with the bank robbery and the more recent 'retired actors playing retired gangsters' international genre, it generates a film which is at many moments very fun to watch.

Much of the story actually takes place in a retirement house where two veteran fighters from the time of the underground independence movement (played by Moni Mosonov and Sasson Gabai) are joined by one of their Brit arch-enemies (and yet family to one of them, and yet a lord, and yes - Patrick Stewart) and by a teen kid in a plot to rob a bank. If the premises seem a little fantasist, I need to say that the script has the unexpected quality of making them almost credible. The old men have the passion of proving once again that their lives fit to the values they fought for in a world that changed. The Brit has his own moral and material reasons. The intellectually super-gifted kid is bullied at school and must do something to revenge the death of his father and save the honor of his mother. There is an evil system (the banks) to fight and an evil person (the bank manager - Moshe Ivgy) to punish. All fits.

The three lead actors are big stars of the Israeli film and stage. It's fun to see them acting especially that some of the lines are really funny. In many moments the film compares well with such famous international productions like 'Space Cowboys' in the 'old boys' genre. Director Reshef Levi's lack of experience with sustaining the pace and avoiding some repetitions and building up for the actions scenes is however felt. In a bank robbery movie the robbery scene is the key and peak of the interest. Here it is repeated - maybe by design, maybe by coincidence - without adding consistent comic or action value, more in order to justify an ending which is good to the heroes and within the limits of some morality. This does not work well, and this is the main reason the film is in my opinion not a big success but only a nice try.

This isn't the first movie about old men who rob a bank, nor the second. But Reshef Levi comes by the theme honestly; his own father was a bank robber for the Jewish underground before Israel regained its independence in 1948. Like his previous movie Lost Islands, which was a great success, this one involves a largish web of characters and relationships, all interesting. The problem with Hunting Elephants is that in order to put the puzzle together, it has to rely too much on verbal explanations of past events. Sometimes it even jumps into the future to show people talking in retrospect about what happens in the main plot. There is also something of a credibility problem with the way the brains of the elderly characters are sharp or muddled depending on what suits the moment. But the performances are good-- it's rather an all-star cast, including many of the bit players-- and there were many lines that had the audience laughing appreciatively. I'm not sure anyone mentions it, but the film takes place in Jerusalem.