Spielberg, the Apologetic

Rating: 9/10 (2 January 2006)

In the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's "Munich," a group of friendly American athletes help a small army of Palestinian terrorists who they mistake for fellow Olympians over the fence into the Olympic village where they later take hostage and massacre the entire Israeli Olympic team. It's a great and knowing way to begin the year's last political thriller in the year of political thrillers. "Munich," helmed by one of film's modern masters ends the year of politics in populist entertainment with a bang.
There's a confusing sense of anarchy in the first twenty minutes of yet another bloated run time where Spielberg cuts back and forth between archival news footage, viewer reactions, and the graphic reenactments of the terrorist act that overshadowed the 1972 Olympiad. Shortly after the tragedy, a covert arm of the Israeli government plots their retaliation. You don't get much back story on those involved, with the exception of the character played by Eric Bana (best known as the "Incredible Hulk"), and it wasn't until after the plot was set into motion that I even realized the stately elderly woman heading it all up was the Prime Minister. Those not well versed in the actual events that shape the film may get lost here.
Once the team of "ordinary" assassins is assembled (among them the excellent Ciaran Hinds best know as Julius Caesar in TV's "Rome" and future James Bond, Daniel Craig), the thriller mechanizations are set into place. Spielberg and his normal cohorts, composer John Williams and cinematographer Janusz Kaminksi, are firing on all cylinders during the meatiest part of the movie and clearly at the top of their games. Spielberg does a lot of crafty dissolves (that are both artistically beautiful and revoltingly gritty in some of their excessive violence and gore), as he weaves his haunting tale. As the assassins pick off targets and go from one scenic European locale to the next, we are treated to pacing that matches the best of Hitchcock's thrillers, and plot points that mirror the best characteristics of a John Le Carre spy novel.
Of course, what we have here is Spielberg at his most self important. For all its rote thriller aspects, this is a political time bomb of a movie with a lot of things to say about terrorism. Though told from the point of view of Israelis acting out of a sense of vengeful justice, it really takes no sides, and shows how all involved think their cause is worth fighting and dying for, and all surrender their values once caught up into the international terrorist machine of bombings, assassinations, retaliations, and double crossings. Still, you also have to give credit to Spielberg, who even at his most austere is still a giddy populist. Who else would have the foresight to team up Julius Caesar (Hinds), the Incredible Hulk (Bana), and James Bond (Craig) as a team of merry assassins?
To mirror the winking opening scene, there is a great closing scene as well, where one character tries to painfully resume a normal life in New York City. The camera lingers on a pretty skyline shot along the river with the World Trade Center looming large and reminding us that terrorism knows no boundaries and has the power to consume us all.