Well Shot and Acted, Everything Else is Eh

Rating: 5/10 (5 May 2016)

Steven Spielberg has made a lot of good historical dramas in his career. "Bridge of Spies" and "Saving Private Ryan" were both excellent, and "Schindler's List" is the best movie I've ever seen. I was looking forward to watching this movie, but unfortunately I was let down.
"Munich" follows a group of Israelis who are tasked with hunting down and killing the terrorists of Black September who were responsible for the Munich Massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games.
To make a historical drama good, you need one of two things. You either need an interesting historical figure to base the movie around, or you need an interesting historical event that's on-screen progression will enthrall people. "Bridge of Spies" and "Schindler's List" had both of these elements. "Munich" has neither.
The characters in the movie are all interchangeable with one another and have no real personality. The five members of Eric Bana's team are all the same person, except they each have a different skill.
The historical story chosen doesn't have anything of interest happening in it either. It is just a typical revenge story. Even more detrimental, it does not feel like there is a satisfactory conclusion to the story. It just isn't a very interesting piece of history to make into a three hour long movie. A better piece of history to focus on would have been the actual Munich massacre instead of the aftermath.
While this is a bad historical drama, I can not say in good conscious that is a bad movie. The movie is well written, well shot, well acted, and well directed for the most part. There is one scene where the way it was put together was confusing. The only technical aspect that was bad was the lighting, as every scene was saturated with light and looked ugly.
There are a lot of good historical dramas out there, and a lot of good ones made by Steven Spielberg. This is not one of them.