disjointed portrait of a man haunted by his own actions (minor spoiler)

Rating: 6/10 (17 December 2005)

i really wanted to like this movie. i really, REALLY wanted to like this movie. to be sure, there were many individual scenes that were well done, touching, powerful, and whatnot. but despite the really marvelous performances of Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Michael Lonsdale, and Geoffrey Rush, there was too much missing and too much jarring strangeness put into this film for me to give it a higher grade.
on the more positive notes, Kushner's writing is touching, almost haunting in many scenes. a few of the non-sex scenes between Bana and Korer (who plays his wife) have such a deeply felt poetic composition of reality that i wished they were in a different movie - i felt they belonged to another kind of story altogether. all of the performers in this movie pull out really incredible work, even down to Omar Metwally, who plays a small but crucial role as a PLO agent. when the audience is in a real-life scene with no effects, just the actors, it is wholly engaging.
the problem exists in the editing and a few overwhelming effect choices. there's a lot of story to fit into a very few scenes, but while the individual scenes do a good job of going from place to place in europe, the editing between scenes seems choppy and seems to leave a lot out. after the beginning explanation of what happened in Munich in 1972, there are quite a few flashback scenes which made me literally speak aloud "okay, i get it" in the theater. later, closer to the end of the story, the lighting and color choices which are meant to enhance the perception of Avner's emotional state just seem overwrought, overdone, and totally cringe-worthy.
then, a particular juxtaposition of flashback and sex scene actually made me physically ill - i could discern no good reason for the scene to go on for as long as it did, other than to finish the gory and horrific action story which was started in the initial flashback scenes. this scene was the one that toppled me over to active discomfort in the choices Spielberg had made.
finally, there were several clips from the actual 1972 coverage which were voiced by the late Peter Jennings, who most people know reported from on the ground at the Munich Olympics. i personally found these to be a distancing factor in the movie - hearing Howard Cosell's voice seemed more to belong to that timeframe, but Jennings sounded different yet was a current-day news hero. i do understand the choice Spielberg made here, but found it distracting instead of informing.
all in all, it's definitely worth watching for the actors and 6 or so of Kushner's scenes, but i can't imagine really *liking* the movie.