Ouch!

Rating: 1/10 (6 May 2006)

I wish I could use my wife's one-word description of this dreadful film: Boring. But since I can't, MUNICH is about the killing of the Israeli athletes during the 1972 Olympics, and the deadly aftermath as the "eye for an eye" Israel government sends out a hit squad to kill those involved in the massacre. All too quickly, the squad starts killing people not on its list. Then the squad itself is decimated. And in the end the squad leader starts having second thoughts about killing anybody else and even those he has killed. Each time he successfully kills a terrorist, the terrorists undertake much larger-scale retaliations. And to top it off, some terrorists are portrayed sympathetically! The movie ends on a very sour, open-ended note. Jews everywhere must have loved this one -- that is, assuming they or anyone else saw it. MUNICH is very long, very boring and confusing. And in his attempt to make the film ultra-realistic, Spielberg manages to make us not care about anybody. There are no good guys, no bad guys. I have no idea what he thought he was doing when he undertook this project. Certainly, it was not to entertain or enlighten the masses, which are the things a good movie does. I suspect Spielberg made MUNICH for his own private purposes, the audience be damned. As for the actors, I would have preferred someone like Viggo Mortensen in the lead, but then we would have had a distinctive, charismatic character with whom to identify, and Spielberg apparently did not wish this. He instead gives us the very bland, nondescript Eric Bana. The very detailed early 1970s look is wasted on a movie that never should have been made. You know how bizarre Hollywood has become when it nominated MUNICH for five Oscars and a best director nom for Spielberg. Unbelievable. Skip this one, big-time.