Review of Munich (2005) by Amraj D — 11 Jan 2011

Given great work like Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, you might think Spielberg had run out of harsh material to shed some light on. Then came 2005's Munich, a mournful masterwork that is unflinching in its brutality.

Munich refers to the 1972 Olympic games held in the German city where eleven Israeli athletes were killed by a group of Palestinian terrorists in what would come to be known as Black September. Out of that harrowing tragedy came the desire to seek revenge on those responsible by the Israeli government.

Taken from the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by George Jonas, and adapted wonderfully by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels In America) and Eric Roth, Munich is Steven Spielberg's harshest film yet.

His film turns its lens on the Israeli hit squad, led by former Mossad agent Avner Kaufman (Eric Bana) who are given the task of taking out the terrorist group, with orders from Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen, excellent). Their only contact is a haunting and frightening Geoffrey Rush, whose nearly every line could freeze the blood. Bana's team is comprised of top-notch actors, each specializing in very specific areas. There's gun man Daniel Craig, bomb expert Matieu Kassovitz, forger Hanns Zischler and clean-up man Ciaran Hinds. Then there's Michael Lonsdale as an operatve, and apparent double agent, who steals nearly every scene he's in.

Spielberg keeps things movie like a thriller, and it does have considerable thrills. The men bounce from London to Paris to Athens and even Beirut as they carry out their vengeance. With each killing comes the threat of conscience, as Spielberg, Kushner and Roth deftly explore the human toll the killing is taking on these executioners.

Not surprisingly, controversy courted the film from practically day one. Israelis objected to what they saw as a portrait of sympathy for Palestinians, while Palestinians basically saw the same, only vice versa.

But Munich is never meant by its creators to be propaganda for anyone; it only seeks to illuminate, and that it does on the weary and haunted face of Avner. Bana is simply magnificent in the role. He hides his family in Brooklyn, but no amount of hiding can erase his actions and his dreams.

We never actually see any of the actual slaughter that sparked the mission until the film's visceral climax in which Spielberg shows a tragedy that can't be undone, and the futility that vengeance carries. 'There are no easy answers' is what Spielberg seems to be saying. And he did it extremely well too.