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The resemblance of the two teenage boys in the film "Buzz" to Littleton, Colo., killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris is positively spooky. Even more unsettling is that "Buzz" is based on an actual murder committed long before last year's Columbine High School massacre.

Adding further to one's sense of unease, the two teenagers are Israeli Jews from "good families."

If "Buzz" shows anything, it's that sociopathic suburban adolescents bent on asserting dominance through violence is not an exclusively American phenomenon. While we are all too accustomed to seeing Israel threatened militarily by neighboring nations and victimized internally by terrorists, discovering innocent-looking Jewish kids who are gratuitously malevolent is chilling.

The film by noted Israeli director Eli Cohen will have its Bay Area premiere at the Contra Costa Jewish Film Festival on Monday, Feb. 14.

Ido (Tony Tin) and Rafi (Itzik Atzmon), the two boys, are smart-ass bullies who try to prove their superiority by harassing their schoolmates. When they've gotten in trouble in the past, they've always managed to outsmart the authorities or to have Ido's well-connected lawyer father get them off the hook.

Ido, the leader of the two, holds the world in contempt. He makes sure to leave clues at a crime scene so the world will know who committed the offense, but not enough evidence to prove it.

He sneers at school authorities, the police and his parents, judging them too stupid to catch him and Rafi. For the most part, he's right, and this emboldens the two to escalate the level of their criminal activity until it ends in murder.

Ofer (Sharon Zur), the new police officer assigned to the boys' school, is thwarted at every turn in trying to hold them responsible for their offenses. A bleeding-heart school headmistress, an indifferent and corrupt police chief, and the boys' parents all excuse the youths' behavior as an overheated hormonal phase they are passing through. They all dismiss such acts as juvenile mischief, admonishing Ofer for being overly zealous, even vindictive, in pursuing the boys.

Ofer persists, however, allying himself with Naomi (Ahuva Keren), the school psychologist who wants to be tough with the boys. She offers no elaborate rationalizations for their behavior. She wants them punished for their cruelty and crimes.

Naomi and Ofer are the most appealing characters in the film. Cohen seems to share their point of view about the boys. He portrays those with undue sympathy for the boys as naive (the headmistress), corrupt (the police chief), or in denial (the boys' parents).

No psychological or sociological theory can explain away their behavior, though.

The fact that Ido's powerful father and indulgent mother get him out of trouble and that Rafi's single mother hasn't got adequate time to properly supervise the boy is not presented as the causes of their depravity. The boys, especially Ido, are, in Naomi's words, "nasty epics of work." The sweet innocence of their appearance masks their irredeemable diabolical nature.

Cohen missteps here and there in "Buzz." He attempts to set up a romantic relationship between Ofer and Naomi, but quickly drops it. The candlelit blood-bonding ritual between Ido and Rafi, during which they pledge themselves to Satan, is by now a leaden cliché.

But the acting in "Buzz" is first-rate. Tin and Atzmon portray the two boys so well that you don't want to believe they are capable of the acts they commit. You yearn for their hidden good side to emerge, but it doesn't because it isn't there.