Starring Kais Nashef, Ali Suliman, and Lubna Azabal. In Arabic with English subtitles. Rated PG. Opens Friday, December 2, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

Two scruffy auto mechanics smoke on a West Bank hillside, listening to music from the Mongolian steppes and bitching about how boring their lives are. They kid about women and their lousy job prospects, and they are ordinary in so many basic ways that it comes as a shock when, the very next morning, they are seen strapping on explosives for a joint suicide mission into Israel.

One of the fellows, Khaled (Ali Suliman), is a bit on the brutish side, but his lifelong pal Said (Kais Nashef) is gentler and more introspective. In fact, the latter seems to be somewhat infatuated with the sophisticated Suha (Belgian-born Lubna Azabal, unrecognizable from her trampy turn in Tony Gatlif's Exils), a westernized Palestinian who has just returned after years abroad.

All in all, Said seems to have more to live for than some of the other no-hopers hemmed in by crappy living standards and violent intrusions in a small, rundown area surrounded by barbed wire and understandably edgy soldiers. When the time comes, the would-be martyrs put their final messages on videotape, although Khaled is a bit put off when he notices that his chain-smoking handler (Amer Hlehel) is so blasé about the whole thing that he's eating a falafel while the tape is rolling. Khaled's response is to add a reminder to his mother to pick up new water filters.

That kind of wry commentary leavens the bitter bread of Paradise Now, which is overall a tense 90 minutes of social observation in the form of a political thriller with something of a love story attached, and perhaps a bit too much speechifying squeezed in.

Writer-director Hany Abu-Assad, a Palestinian now living in the Netherlands (he made the widely seen documentary Ford Transit), keeps the anger on a fairly high flame. Even the moderate Suha fairly spits when arguing with Said and against the occupation. But the politics are purposely generic, with no militant group identified. In fact, none of the rebels seem particularly religious or even that convinced about what they are doing.

The most disturbing scene contains no direct violence or seeming risk (unless you consider walking around with TNT strapped to your waist to be risky). It happens when Said and Suha stop at a convenience store that does a brisk business renting out tapes like the one he just made at three shekels each. Suha is shocked to discover that cassettes of collaborators being executed are even more popular.

"I could get more for them," the clerk explains, "but it would screw up my cash register." Boy, that sounds like life, doesn't it?