Munich (***1/2)

Steven Spielberg’s thriller begins with a riveting, documentary-like encapsulation of the Israeli hostage-taking at the 1972 Olympics, then follows a Israeli counter-terrorist cell as they seek to assassinate the perpetrators. In the guise of a suspense thriller, it raises moral questions that remain unanswered.

In 1972, PLO operatives kidnapped and shortly thereafter killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Summer Olympics. These events, the subject of a well-regarded 1999 documentary, One Day in September, provide a riveting beginning to Steven Spielberg’s thriller. (The incorporation of contemporaneous news footage provides authenticity.) The main story, however, is the alleged plot by Mossad (Israel’s CIA) to assassinate the men who planned the attack. The early part of the movie—the attack, the meeting at which prime minister Golda Meir authorizes retaliation, and the selection of a cell leader (Eric Bana of Troy) to carry out the mission—is suspenseful, immensely sad, politically intriguing, and even funny. (Another John Williams score provides tension.) Only by comparison is the rest of the movie a letdown. The team—five fairly ordinary men—traverse much of Western Europe. We get more information about methods of killing than how everyone’s located. At some point a human font of information just appears. Perhaps this was a real person, perhaps a composite.

Excepting this, the film’s point of view never shifts from the Israelis, but it asks two questions. Does violence, even when justified, merely perpetuate conflict? And, can a person be an assassin and retain his humanity? As to the latter, Munich covers, though perhaps not as well, some of the same thematic turf as Walk on Water, an Israeli film about another Mossad agent that had a lengthy Philadelphia run last spring. That film, wholly fictional, had better-developed characters, while this one provides more of a sociopolitical angle. The screenplay is by Eric Roth (Ali, The Insider, Forrest Gump) and Tony Kushner (Angels in America); it’s based in part on a book by George Jonas, Vengeance, that had previously been adapted into a 1986 TV movie. (The book’s account has been disputed, it should be noted.) In retrospect, the Munich Massacre looms as a pivotal event in the escalation of terrorism. While Spielberg’s film doesn’t directly link the past to today, it asks questions that continue to have no good answers.

IMDb link

circulated via email 12/29/05 and posted online 9/21/13