who fight, the futility of war is inseparable from its nobility." The film's concept and look were compared to those of Letters from Iwo Jima. The film gained mostly very positive reviews in Israel; several reviewers called it one of the best Israeli films ever. Hannah Brown of The Jerusalem Post called it the first great Israeli war film. The less positive reviews claimed that the film lacks a direct confrontation with its issues or criticism. Effi Eitam, an Israeli war hero who was an Israel Defense Forces high commander in Lebanon (he was replaced by Moshe Kaplinsky several months before the withdrawal), said that the film "successfully depicts, in great detail, the military experience". Eitam also criticized the creators for showing only the last days of the fighting and not telling the full story of the 18 years of Israeli fighting in Lebanon ("Whoever watches this movie is likely to think that this entire war was just a matter of inane duck shooting... That’s not how we operated"). Linda Barnard of the Toronto Star notes that "Liraz can't protect his men and is visibly diminished each time they face danger and death." As well, he "faces his last order [to destroy the fort] with resolve mixed with bitterness and anger over the useless sacrifice of those who died to defend what the army is about to wipe out". Andrea Gronvall of the Chicago Reader calls it a "blistering antiwar film"; she states that "the absurdity and terrors of their situation are compounded when the squad receives orders to evacuate and blow up its bunker—something the enemy has been trying to do all along." Jonathan Richards notes that the film has a "slow and contemplative [approach], punctuated by shocking bursts of explosive violence". He states that "at a little over two hours, [the film] drags at times with its static, claustrophobic setting and thin plot," but nevertheless states that "it makes an urgent case for the futility of most wars, which serve immediate political goals that afterward don’t seem terribly important." He states that "at its core[,] Beaufort is about the heroism of withdrawal, the guts it takes to reject the militaristic mindset that believes any retreat is a weakness." Commercial Beaufort is one of the most successful Israeli films of the 2000s. It made more than US$500,000 in the first 3 weeks of its release in the Israeli market,