Kidon (Spear), gives the plot a twist by having a small-time gang of criminals murder Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in an attempt to frame Mossad, Israel's spy agency.

Dubai police accused the Mossad of carrying out the actual hit in a five-star hotel, and released surveillance camera footage of the assassination team tracking al-Mabhouh.

"The movie is not a documentary and it's not a history movie. It's my take on the al-Mabhouh story," said French-Israeli director Emmanuel Nakash.

Kidon is the supposed name of the Mossad's assassination unit.

Refaeli plays Einav Schwartz, an Israeli temptress, whose role is to lure al-Mabhouh into the assassins' trap.

For the film, a French-Israeli production, a glitzy hotel in Eilat served as the Dubai hotel.

The characters are all fictional, except for al-Mabhouh, a Hamas leader in exile who helped smuggle weapons to militants in the Gaza Strip and who was wanted for capturing and killing two Israeli soldiers in the late 1980s.

Refaeli, Leonardo DiCaprio's ex-girlfriend, has made the crossover from modelling to acting before.

She starred in the 2011 thriller Session and appeared in the Israeli TV series Pick Up.

But she said Kidon is giving her a taste of a job she really wants: working as an agent for Israel's notorious spy agency.

"I would love to be in the Mossad and maybe I am. Who knows? I think that being a famous model is the best cover," Refaeli joked.

On the set at the Eilat hotel, extras wearing traditional Arab garb strolled around the lobby speaking in Hebrew as others dressed as heavily made-up cocktail waitresses.

The £3.2 million film is expected to be released in France and Israel next year.

The hotel footage of the real operation was a boon for actor Shredy Jabarin, who studied it meticulously for his portrayal of al-Mabhouh.

"I saw a sharpness, a lot of caution, like an animal with many instincts. If you watch the video, he gets out of the elevator, looks right, looks left, checks the area, like a robot," Jabarin said.

Refaeli said Israelis are used to hearing about covert operations blamed on the Mossad, but the al-Mabhouh killing was the most sensational, making it perfect fodder for a film.

"This specific one sounded like a movie scene," Refaeli said. "It was just like reading a script."