Munich Is A Great Accomplishment

Rating: 10/10 (3 October 2012)

Munich is a historical drama about the Israeli government's secret retaliation against the Black September terrorist group after the Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics.It stars Eric Bana and Daniel Craig together with Ciarán Hinds,Mathieu Kassovitz,Hanns Zischler and Geoffrey Rush. The film shows how a squad of assassins, led by former Mossad agent Avner, track down and kill a list of Black September members thought to be responsible for the murders of eleven Israeli athletes. The second part of the film, which depicts the Israeli government's response, has been debated a great deal by film critics and newspaper columnists. It is based on the book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team by Canadian journalist George Jonas, which in turn was based on the story of Yuval Aviv, who claims to have been a Mossad agent. In the book, Aviv's story is told through a protagonist called "Avner".The film written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth; and it was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg.
At its core, Munich is a straightforward thriller. It's built on a relatively stock movie premise and the revenge plot: innocent people are killed, the bad guys got away with it, and someone has to make them pay. But director Steven Spielberg uses that as a starting point to delve into complex ethical questions about the cyclic nature of revenge and the moral price of violence.By all rights, Munich should be an unqualified success as it has gripping subject matter relevant to current events.It was co-written by one of America's greatest living playwrights in Tony Kushner and an accomplished screenwriter in Eric Roth.Also,it stars an appealing and likable actor in Eric Bana and it was helmed by Steven Spielberg, of all people. While it certainly is a great movie, it falls just short of the immense heights such talent should propel it to. This is due more to some questionable plot devices than anything else. But while certain aspects ring hollow, the movie as a whole is a profound accomplishment.This examination of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict in the aftermath of the Munich assassinations is politically even-handed and cinematically visceral.An absolutely good film indeed.