Munich [2005]
Director: Steven Spielberg
Actor: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Geoffrey Rush
On the morning of September 5, with six days left in the Olympic Games in Munich, the worst tragedy in Olympic history hit. Eight Arab terrorists stormed into the Olympic village and raided the apartment building that housed the Israeli contingent. Two Israeli athletes were killed and nine more were seized as hostages. They demanded the release of over 200 Palestinians serving time in Israeli jails, along with two renowned German terrorists. After a day of unsuccessful negotiations, the terrorists collected the hostages and headed for the military airport in Munich for a flight back to the Middle East. At the airport, German sharpshooters opened fire, killing three of the Palestinians. A horrifying gun battle ensued, claiming the lives of all nine of the hostages, along with one policeman and two terrorists.
This film is a fictional follow-up to these events. Israel decides upon a response. They recruit five Mossad operatives under the leadership of Avner (Bana) to kill 11 men who all had a hand in the orchestration of the hostage-taking. They all have to resign from Mossad, and Israel no longer recognises their existence, and they start hunting them down one by one. Their jobs become more and more professional, but they themselves also run more and more risk of exposure, and counter-assassination. Slowly but surely they become paranoid and some of them lose their heart and start to question whether or not they’re doing the right thing.
I like this film, but I don’t love this film. I like this film because the story is pretty solid, some of the acting is good, and the feel of the movie is very ’70s, which fits. It’s nice to see assassins who are not stone-faced killers, like the assassins from Replacement Killers, for instance. I also like how it’s shown that all of them are convinced of their love for Israel, the need for retribution and the righteousness of the Israeli cause, and how that slowly gets turned into a confused mess of loyalties and ethics.
I don’t love this film because I thought that Eric Bana’s acting was sub-par. I have seen some of his films, like Chopper and Black Hawk Down, in which he really shines, but sometimes it seems like he’s having an off-day, like in Munich and Troy. Certain parts of the film are really well done, but other parts just seem a little empty, which is a shame.
What first seemed like a bit of Israeli propaganda, slowly turns into scathing criticism of terrorism in all its forms, climaxing into the very last shot of the film, of southern Manhattan, showing the World Trade Center towers in the background.