journal.wiredreflexes.com

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.

Live Free or Die Hard [2007]

Director: Len Wiseman
Actor: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant, Kevin Smith, Maggie Q, Cliff Curtis

Wow, another fantastic installment of the Die Hard series. I was very disappointed with the second film, the third film picked (I know that most people don’t agree with me on that), and this one showed me that it had not only come back after an absence of…what?…12 years, but that it had also evolved. The terrorists have evolved, McClane is getting a little older, and the stories become a bit more sophisticated.

McClane is asked to go pick up a young hacker in NYC. The Feds asked for a senior detective to do so, and of course, this hacker, together with many others, was the unwitting accomplice of a bunch of terrorists preparing a firesale, an attack on a system that completely cleans it out. The system they’re attacking; The United States. They want to completely shut down the entire country. Of course, this young, unwitting accomplice gets picked up by John McClane just as some terrorists come to kill him, cleaning up any loose ties.

John manages to get him out and to the Feds HQ in DC when the first stage of the terrorists’ plan is executed; completely derailment of all infrastructure. What starts then is a race against time as John and the hacker try to throw a monkey-wrench in the terrorists’ plans.

Personally, I love John McClane. He’s bitter, he’s cynical, he’s determined to the point of stupidity, and he’s one tough hombre. I laughed my ass off as John decides to drive an SUV through a bunch of offices just to get at a woman who kept kicking his ass. I also loved Kevin Smith’s cameo as a super-hacker still living in his mother’s basement.

Some might say that Timothy Olyphant as the big bad guy had too little personality, or perhaps not enough gravitas on screen. I think he displayed all the qualities of a sociopath to perfection, and combined it with the superiority-complex of most computer-literate geeks. :)

Fantastic film. I hope they’ll make another one soon. I really do. :)