Best Spielberg film in a while

Rating: 8/10 (3 January 2006)

Spielberg's last film had a deficient story patched together with great modern FX and was a failure, even with Tom Cruise in it. Munich was a great story with almost no modern FX. Which film was better? Munich, hands down. Thus, FX alone does not a great Spielberg movie make, contrary to the opinions of many children of all ages who wouldn't know a great story if it came out of a dark closet wearing King Kong's ape suit. "Show me the action", they would say. Well, Munich had plenty of action, and plenty of great story too. That's enough for anyone who loves great and authentic(as is possible in a dramatic film) history films as much as I do.
Ahhh, Munich, that Spielberg labor of love so well done overall.....dramatic..... balanced.... well acted.... so aware of historical truths on both sides. Other than needing about 20 or so slow minutes cut out to enhance the pacing and suspense element it was terrific, and scary as hell in places. Spielberg knows better than most how to show the common man in uncommon crisis situations, with that man's warts and incompetences and humanity(or lack of it) bared, and he did it just right here, almost to nerve-wracking, nail-biting excess.
Others have detailed the story to a fare-thee-well, so I won't. Suffice to say, Spielberg "gets it" about the Middle East and its conflict history, and shows it in this film. His film told that a thousand years of Islamic-Jewish warfare is not going to be cured by trading lives now, just as it hasn't helped over those many past years. As one Islamic character in the film said.... as long as the Jews have a chunk of Palestine's homeland, the conflict will continue forever until they are gone, every single one. The keyword here is "homeland", even the film recognized that, and the Palestinians will stop at nothing until they get it back so they can die at home in peace and glory.
Carve another piece of land from some other country and give it to them instead?....Forget it. Palestinians will never stop until they get their original homeland back. It's ingrained in their religion and culture and they will never stop fighting for it. So, on it goes, endlessly.
Will they get it back under Dub's watch?....No! Will it ever happen?... Arabic people are many and Jews are few and the world has many days left. Jews have had the world's sympathy since WWII so they have prevailed in this war to date, but with time and possibly more sympathetic world leaders to this Palestinian plight, who knows? That's as good an answer as any, and it could happen someday. It's a fickle world and alliances change.
Someday, sometime, endless religion-based killing in the Middle East has to stop. See this film and understand better both sides of this issue. That's Spielberg's point, and I commend him highly for telling it so well.