A second viewing later and I've fallen in love with the characters and story

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2008)

I first saw the movie when it came out in theaters in December 2005, and was ultimately forgotten by me, until I decided to buy it on DVD two and a half years later and watched it again. And I found that the movie was highly enjoyable, entertaining, and something that I could easily watch again and again just for the character interaction.
Sometimes it seems ridiculous to base politics and beliefs off what is seen in movies, but this wouldn't be the first time it's happened to me; before seeing the movie, I saw Israel as the wrong party in the Middle East, having stolen Palestinian land, and then leeching US assistance in oppressing Palestinians just because they lived in Israel 2,000 years ago. After this movie, I can't see either side as bad. It's a conflict beyond black and white whose basest participants are nowhere near anything resembling Stalinist or Hitleresque evil people they are made out to be by their enemies via propaganda or extremist ideology.
The opening sequence of the movie is done in amazing fashion that makes you feel as though you are watching the news and hearing about the events unfold in real time with your supportive Muslim family and your tense, frozen-stiff with terror Jewish family, while you also get very beautifully shot and gory scenes of the Black September terrorists breaking into the Israeli athletes' hotel room in Munich, where the fighting and conflict is so well-directed, you feel as if you were one of the Israelis, and that if you just stayed quiet and followed orders, you would make it out alive.
What ultimately happens is already well-known, but still hits painfully, and with the simultaneous reading of the Israeli names of the victims on the news with the Palestinian names of those who planned the botched kidnapping listed off by Mossad high command.
Every character that is come across in the film is interesting, and has innate chemistry with whomever else they're talking to. Eric Bana as Avner is perfect in the role, being highly sympathetic even as he is indeed a terrorist. Ciaran Hinds as Carl plays the father-like figure to Avner and the rest of the group, like a rock holding the makeshift family together. Daniel Craig as Steve is the quintessential hothead who seems the be the prototypical terrorist in that he is driven purely by hatred for the Palestinians, yet is still well-rounded in that he is a believable, likable person, without any characteristics that seem wildly out of character for him. Matheiu Kassovitz as Robert is the makeshift bomb-maker, who manages some minor humor that is in no way out of place or inappropriate.
Even their enemies in the conflict are keenly humanized without being overly apologetic, from Abdel Wael Zwaiter in Rome, who is clumsily killed while trying to talk and reason with a highly nervous and tense duo of Avner and Robert, Hussein Al Bashir's brief conversation with Avner in the Cyprus hotel balcony before the bomb under his bed blows him up, and nearly kills Avner and two civilians in the process, to Louis's intentionally bunking the four Mossad agents in an old apartment with a group of Palestinians at the same time, the two groups forced to keep their identities and intentions a secret or else risk exposing their plans to the enemy.
This sequence also has some lighter, and yet in the broader context most deeply disturbing, moments, such as Steve and a Palestinian silently fighting over what music to play on the radio, before mutually settling on an American station (I forgot what type of music), and Avner arguing Arab/Israeli politics with the Palestinian group's leader, with the Palestinian's conclusion that the reason to fight the Israelis over Palestine is that a home is more important than anything else.
Like with most any movie involving a makeshift "family" between comrades, there's always the series of events that leads to its dissolution, and for viewers like me, a sense of that time being the best time of their lives, and the (survivors') lives afterwords being bleak and emptier without the comradery. Indeed, even Spielberg said of the character of Avner "I don't think he'll ever find peace".
For the negatives, I think the biggest down-point of the movie would be the poorly-explained, completely fictional and unimportant French connection involving "Louis" and his whole amoral spy network of secret information and connections that seemingly works everywhere with everyone from terrorists to first world countries, in a sort of "Quantam" ("Quantam of Solace") sort of 'apathetic godly overseer' type role. While at the very least the conversations had with Avner and the old man (forgot his name) at the head of the family, I didn't find it to be all that necessary, and would have spoken more for Mossad's intelligence capabilities if the information on their targets had come from Mossad instead of from an unnamed, barely known, seemingly unstructured independent French organization with eyes all over the world and no real desire to do anything with it but sell information to the highest bidder.
While there are flaws, it's definitely a movie both tragic and enrapturing, grittily shot and realistically depicted, with intense chemistry between virtually everyone involved that makes it worth multiple viewings and owning.