A variation on the context of violence with a bit of realpolitik thrown in

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2006)

Forgive me if these comments about Munich veer excessively towards the negative, but the movie telling (in fictionalized form) of the reprisals against the Black September murderers of the Israeli athletes in Munich in 1972 is a mixed bag, not all of it appealing.
For instance, if you like seeing macho men being sent on secret missions which involves the killing of eleven men strewn around Europe and New York, the kind of killing today so ubiquitous in thrillers both in the cinema and daily TV, then it may be for you.
If you like such rat-tat-tat violence, remote-controlled telephonic assassinations, targeted detonations and pouring blood and gore, even though there is little cinematically new about it, you'll certainly get pleasure from it too; and particularly if you enjoy a bit of stuntsmanship en passant.
Further, if you are intrigued by political and military cynicism at the highest levels, amoral connivance and the transfer of information for hard cash, and a touch of cat-and-mouse pursuit and counter-pursuit, then sure, it's OK too, but well short of a thriller by, say, a John le Carre. And if you think that you might learn something new about Israeli-Palestinian politics and their respective people's impasse, provided that you are a regular reader of the daily press and watcher of television news, the film has very little, if anything, that you would not have heard before - and that in a handful of very brief exchanges in a movie that runs on to some 165 minutes in all.
Mercifully, Munich does contain a few redeeming human moments in which even brutalized killers are shown to possess scruples and consciences over what they are doing both politically and morally, and to suffer nightmares over their actions and the paranoia of the hunter becoming hunted, and, like the leader of the team, to weep over his separation from wife and child in the service of his mission. distressed about being separated from pregnant wife and newborn child then I guess it might be worth sitting through the movie.
In the light of all this, whether Munich is a "good" movie ultimately depends on the eye and taste of the beholder. Technically, it's well made. But, from what I had read about it beforehand and about it being allegedly controversial, I wouldn't have bothered, my major reason for having gone being the wish to see for myself what the supposed controversy over its political content was all about. It appears that the major bone of contention has been the argument as presented by a PLO fighter to an Israeli for a Palestinian state, which thereby appears to posit a kind of parity between the Palestinians' rights to a sovereign state and Israel's right to remain to its homeland as it exists today.
Profound, you may think, and new? Then, by all means, see the movie. You might, for any of the above reasons, actually be induced to see it. But remember one thing here. What you will be seeing is one factual event - the assassination of the eleven-strong Israeli Olympic squad in Munich 1972. The rest is a fictional reconstruction of the retaliation meted out to those responsible for these killings organized by the leaders of the Black September movement, a mission of reprisal which, as one commentator in high places in Israel said, uses a great deal of artistic licence quite out of keeping with procedural reality and normal Israeli governmental and security department protocol.
A long screed this, and, in the end, non-committal. Yes, I know. Let's just say that, on its own terms, as film, it was reasonably absorbing. If gung-ho thrillers appeal to the viewer, this will afford him such pleasure as he may want; the performances reasonably meet the rather narrow dramatic range demanded of the actors; the cinematography is accomplished.
But is it truly good, high grade, prize-winning material? Suffice it to say that one can more profitably spend one's money on more edifying fare.