High-class, yet disappointing production

Rating: 5/10 (18 February 2008)

this is what I liked about this movie: the exploration of the ambiguous nature of revenge; the committed actors; the way the "targets" were often humanized with dialogue and character detail; the fine photography; the historical research, the international sets; the mostly appropriate music; and the perfect costumes and hair design by Joanna Johnston and the extensive makeup team, which anchor the film squarely in the 70's.
this is what I didn't like about the movie: the unnecessary gore, which in my opinion actually distracted from the emotional impact of the events described; the weird use of women's bodies (more on that below); the frequent moments when the dialogue veered into "everything-is-an-oblique-metaphor" land; and the plot elements that were unconvincing (these were not minor; more on that below, too).
I don't think I'm really giving spoilers below--I tried to word the descriptions very generally- -but if you don't want to know anything about the action of the film, stop reading here.
it was annoying that, when a female character is killed, the actress has to go out of her way to show her naked body to the camera for as long as possible, even to the point of creating a goof--the robe is covering her nether parts when she sits down, and suddenly not covering them when the camera pulls back. I found the scene where a character flashes back to violent scenes while having sex--leading to lengthy cuts between "sex" and "death"--both irritating and unoriginal (I saw an extremely similar scene in an episode of "Miami Vice" that Don Johnson directed).
As for the unconvincing parts of the plot: I wish the story had focused a bit more on the actual ways the agents might have found their targets, rather than having them rely so much on a mysterious mastermind who has apparently unlimited knowledge of everyone in the world. I really don't think that's the way it happened.
All in all, I was disappointed by the film--it had a lot of things to like, but I really didn't care for the way this story was told. I think Steven Spielberg has a large sadistic streak, which causes him to make his viewers suffer through as much slow-motion gore as possible, and IMHO, it's not helping him make his points. I think a few of the violent shots were necessary to show what really happened, but when it comes to lingering over them, all that makes me do is think about squibs. I got much more emotional impact from the scene where a character cries, than from the scene where a character slowly bleeds to death, and the brilliantly re-created view of the Munich terrorist on a balcony was much more chilling than the close-up view of someone getting shot in the mouth.