Let’s call them Rodney King movies. You know, the ones that ask, “Why can’t we all just get along?” The latest example of the genre is “Free Zone,” written and directed by Amos Gitai, the veteran Israeli filmmaker whose “Promised Land” (about sex slavery in the Middle East) gained him some notoriety two years ago. Although Mr. Gitai has produced, directed, written, and acted in more than three dozen films, his ideas about the Arab-Israeli conflict are about at the level of Mr. King’s understanding of black-white relations in America.

The title of the film refers to one of the two duty-free trade areas established by the Jordanian government to promote export industries. The free zone in Zarqa, northeast of Amman, lies roughly equidistant from the Israeli and Syrian borders, along the route to Iraq. In the movie, it is the destination of an odd couple in an SUV: Hanna (Hanna Laszlo), a middle-aged Israeli, and Rebecca (Natalie Portman), a young Jewish American (or at least that’s what she thought she was; don’t ask me to explain). For reasons that aren’t clear at the beginning and still aren’t clear at the end, Rebecca is willing to travel across miles of unfriendly desert with Hanna, someone she barely knows, who is trying to connect with a mysterious character, called “the American,” in the free zone.

They encounter border guards, of the hostile (Israeli) and polite (Jordanian) variety. They stop for gas. They talk. They drive some more. They talk some more. When the feeling of desperate improvisation gets too oppressive,which is every five minutes or so, Mr. Gitai reasserts his feeble directorial and authorial authority and tries to wake up his audience by superimposing double-exposed flashback scenes on top of the conversation. Apparently Mr. Gitai – although, or perhaps because, he has a Ph.D. in architecture from Berkeley – is unfamiliar with the word “outtake.”

The arrival of the two women at the free zone launches the SUV in a completely different direction. There they meet Leila (Hiam Abbass), a Palestinian with something to hide. Something to do with “the American.” There is more driving. There is more talking. Accusations are traded. There is another border crossing, this time in the opposite direction. But only one woman makes it across, at least in time to escape the closing credits, seemingly as long as the film proper, which continues rolling as the names of cast and crew scroll over the nonstop gabfest.

Perhaps the most remarkable scene of the movie (not a spoiler, since it’s the opening scene) is Ms. Portman crying – in close-up, before an unblinking, shaky handheld camera, for nearly six mascara-running, snot-snuffling minutes accompanied by a screeching ditty about a lamb that was eaten at the beginning of a long food chain of various other creatures.”How long will this hellish circle last?” the singer wails. “How long will this madness last?” Indeed. Where is the prophet of South Central now, when we really need him?