The penultimate showdown in Doha 12—a three-way gun battle between Our Heroes Jake and Miriam, the Hezbollah team out to kill them, and the Mossad team out to kill Hezbollah—takes place at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery.
Green-Wood, now a National Historic Landmark, is 478 acres of green set between Park Slope and Sunset Park in south-central Brooklyn and encompasses part of the battlefield for the Revolutionary War Battle of Brooklyn Heights. Designed in 1838 by David Bates Douglass, by the 1850s Green-Wood had become the Central Park of Brooklyn, a site for picnics and walks. Richard Upjohn, a founding member of the American Institute of Architects, designed the cemetery’s Gothic-fantasy north gate in 1861. Much of the elite of New York City took up permanent residence here during the last half of the 19th Century.
Green-Wood is a lovely space even in November, when I visited it a couple years ago. Unlike a lot of cemeteries, it has topography – hills and dales and lakes. It also features a large number of fine Victorian tombs and markers, especially around the Gothic-revival chapel near the north gate (the locus for the gunfight in Doha 12).
Why here? Cemeteries are great locations for any fight, especially older ones with lots of above-ground monuments since those create lots of hiding places. Green-Wood has that lovely chapel surrounded by high ground, a perfect shooting gallery in a bowl. Also, Jake chooses the spot because it’s not far from his apartment and he knows it well, giving him a much-needed advantage in the showdown.