Spielbergs latest offering Munich is a good movie but not quite there unlike some of his other movies. That Spielberg is very proud of his Jewish roots and Israel is quite apparent from some of his other movies primary among them Schindlers List.
11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and then murdered by a terrorist group called Black September during the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. This movie is about the Mossads retaliation to assassinate Palestinian leaders suspected of planning and carrying out this attack.
A 5 person team lead by Avner (Eric Bana) are recruited and assigned the task of eliminating the Palestinian leaders who are suspected of carrying out the attack. Initially the team does not question about the roles played by the persons they are asked to eliminate and even rejoice when the kill the first guy pn their list.
But soon the disillusionment creeps in when they realise that the persons they kill are being replaced by some one whos probably far worse. And soon they are forced into killing civilians and also start becoming targets of assassinations. The disillusionment is totally captured by a pleading Mathieu Kassovitz when he opts out of a mission where the team plans to kill a Dutch assassin who has killed one of their team: " We are supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. And we're losing it. If I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul. ".
This is probably one of the highlights of the movie, it does not pass any judgement on either the Jews or the Palestinians. The internal conflicts are brilliantly portrayed by Eric Bana, one of many gripping performances in the movie. What the movie lacks though is a single theme on which the director tries to get through to the audience. There is a superficial handling of a lot of issues but none of them are examined more thoroughly so what one ends up getting is a lot of questions without many answers. But surely the movie is well worth a watch, if for nothing else then for the excellent cinematography and the great performances (I am leaving out Geoffrey Rush and the new James Bond Daniel Craig here since I am too lazy to write anything more).
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I for one sure love people getting killed :). I also dont have problems with people making movies which just leave questions wide open, but in this case the movie would have been that much better if he had not raised too many questions in the middle of which one gets lost and better off tackling a not-so-wide area approach....but anyways thats my take on it. And yes Eric Bana crying somehow reminded me of Shah Rock Khan..........
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