Low-key and lived-in, the immigrant tale &ldquo;Amreeka&rdquo; at first feels like a this-will-be-good-for-you movie.</p><p> You can try to resist it, but by the time Cherien Dabis&rsquo; writing/directing effort is over, you&rsquo;ll be completely sucked in.</p><p>Remember the terrific indie entry &ldquo;The Visitor&rdquo;? These two would make a perfect double feature. (The film opens today at the Glenwood Arts.)</p><p>&ldquo;Amreeka&rdquo; begins in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinian divorc&eacute;e Muna (Nisreen Faour) works in a bank and does her best by her teenage son, Fadi (Melkar Muallem). But the indignities of life are wearing her down. </p><p>Israeli security has turned a 10-minute drive to work into a two-hour ordeal. Huge barriers &mdash; they look like the Berlin Wall &mdash; are going up to separate new Jewish settlements from natives who&rsquo;ve lived here for years. </p><p>On a personal level Muna is just holding on. She has gained weight and lost hope since her husband ran off with a younger, skinnier woman. </p><p>Then Muna learns she has received approval to go live with her sister&rsquo;s family in suburban Chicago. At first she&rsquo;s reluctant, but Fadi argues he&rsquo;ll have no future otherwise.</p><p>&ldquo;Amreeka&rdquo; (Arabic for &ldquo;America&rdquo;) plays out against the coalition invasion of Iraq &mdash; not the best time to be a Middle Easterner in the snowbound Heartland. </p><p>Muna&rsquo;s sister Raghda (&ldquo;The Visitor&rsquo;s&rdquo; wonderful Hiam Abbass) and her physician husband, Nabeel (Yussuf Abu-Warda), are going through a rough patch. Since 9/11 Nabeel has been losing patients. The couple have fallen behind on the mortgage. Raghda is cranky, and the easygoing Nabeel now sleeps in the basement rec room.</p><p>At his new high school, Fadi and his cousin (Alia Shawkat) deal with boors who think there&rsquo;s an al-Qaida operative behind every dark complexion. (And it&rsquo;s not just the kids &mdash; customs agents and local cops exhibit the terrorist heebie-jeebies as well.) Previously a model student, Fadi starts smoking pot, sneaking out at night and getting into fights.</p><p> Having lost most of her cash in a foul-up at customs, Muna is desperate to start contributing.</p><p>From this outline you might conclude that &ldquo;Amreeka&rdquo; is at best preachy and at worst anti-American.</p><p>Not even close.</p><p>The Omaha-born Dabis (her father is Palestinian, her mother Jordanian) gives us full-blooded characters who discover that while their adopted country can be brusque and judgmental, it&rsquo;s also a place of charity, compassion and warmth. </p><p>And in the big-eyed, amply proportioned Faour we have a heroine whose insecurities and late-emerging strengths take us from pity to something approximating triumph.</p><p> Dabis never overplays her hand. There are no Hollywood moments here, no brain-dead plot developments. Muna&rsquo;s attraction to Fadi&rsquo;s rumpled high school vice principal (Joseph Ziegler) is merely suggested, but like so much of this film, we extrapolate from the suggestion that hope and prosperity are just around the corner.</p><p>You can&rsquo;t get much more American than that.</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">&lsquo;AMREEKA&rsquo; &#x2605;&#x2605;&#x2605; 1/2 </span></strong><br /> <strong>Director: </strong>Cherien Dabis</p><p><strong>Cast: </strong>Nisreen Faour, Melkar Muallem, Hiam Abbass</p><p><strong>Rated: </strong><strong>PG-13</strong> for brief drug use involving teens, and some language; some Arabic with subtitles</p><p><strong>Running time:</strong> 1:36</p><p></div>