all the boredom of a documentary without the historical truth

Rating: 1/10 (1 March 2006)

This film has the feeling of a documentary. It has the kinds of extraneous details and odd occurrences that documentary makers leave in their films to give you a fuller history.
Unfortunately, the consensus from historians and intelligence experts seems to be that Munich is neither accurate nor plausible. It neither shows what really happened, nor even a competent construction of what might have happened. So when you strip away the value of learning true history, what is left? Not much.
A large part of the film has to do with mundane details of an intelligence operation. This would be interesting if these details were accurate, but since they aren't, its hard to see why anyone would care about them.
Another major part has to do with the relationship of the main character with a criminal he uses to get the job done. Again, this is all made up, so it doesn't tell you anything historical about how criminals and intelligence agents cooperated in the 70's.
What's left are the "issues". The two issues are whether terrorism is moral and whether killing terrorists is moral. But the movie doesn't really bring any new ideas to the debate. It doesn't even do a good job of exploring the obvious ideas.
If you are willing to accept that this film will teach you nothing factual about the history, nor will it explore the politics, but are hoping for at least an interesting story, you won't find it. As far as revenge movies go, this one is totally boring.
I wish all the theaters that showed "Munich" had instead shown "Walk on Water," an Israeli film about a modern Mossad assassin who kills terrorists. "Walk on Water" never claims to be anything but fiction, but it explores the issues of justice, revenge, and morality with more truth than "Munich" does. "Walk on Water" also has real characters and a good story, both of which "Munich" lacks.
"Walk on Water": http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0352994/