Terrorism, Then and Now

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2006)

What should have been an uneventful Olympics in Munich, 1972, became the bloodshed that unfolded like a Moebius strip and unleashed even more blood unto the world. On September 5, 1972, eight Palestinian terrorists killed two Israeli athletes, kidnapped nine more, and asked for safe passage out of Germany and the subsequent liberation of Arab prisoners in Israeli and German prisons. Once at the airport they encountered resistance from the German authorities, and in a scuffle, all of the other nine hostages were killed.
This led to the Israeli government to have the Mossad -- Israel's intelligence agency -- track down and kill every terrorist responsible for the killings. For this they hired one of Golda Meir's bodyguards, known as Avner, put him in a special ops team, and gave them minimal information about these terrorists. Avner on his own is able to strike back at the "supposed" terrorists via the appearance of a shady Parisian named Louie, but as the assignments become more and more difficult, he wonders if it is all worth it, and once his own team gets decimated by counter-agents, he wonders if behind every terrorist there is a even more dangerous one just waiting in the wings with ways to get back at him and his family.
Steven Spielberg is at his best when not directing sci-fi movies. The world of 1972 hasn't changed a bit then from now: when one sees the events of September 11, 2001 (and the World Trade Center inserted into the New York City skyline right at the final scene), and the political interests which led to their horrific unfolding on American soil -- once a concept thought unthinkable -- it becomes food for thought if behind every Saddam, every Osama, there aren't tens, if not hundreds, waiting, with more reasons to hate the Western world for butting their heads in their business. Avner, while a minion of Israel, ponders these things, and is himself terrorized when he comes to America to live a life away from the madness he was involved in: namely, the never-ending conflict between Israel and Palestine, both fighting for what they consider home. As one PLO member effectively says: "Home is all we know."
No right, no wrong, but a grey middle is the prevalent tone in MUNICH. While re-enacting a swift retribution against those who destroy order would be the thing to do, what does it solve? Spielberg doesn't say. What he does do is create an increasing, nail-biting suspense that Hitchcock himself would have loved -- and this film, reminiscent itself of SABOTAGE, is proof that terror and mayhem at the hands of subversives is still a thing of now as much as then and that innocents are always on hand to pay with the intended victims. One sequence, as the foursome wait for their first target to pick up the phone but find that his young daughter has not left the house yet, is incredibly powerful. Another one is when Avner waits for a bomb to go off in the room beside him. Nothing is ever clean and easy in the real world, and even bombers can never really know what to expect from their toys, and all one can do is wait and wait and wait.
MUNICH has strong performances all throughout. Eric Bana is tortured as Avner, a man who only wants to be with his wife and young daughter and cannot escape the horrors he has seen. Geoffrey Rush, Ciaran Hinds, Daniel Craig, Mathieu Kassovitz, Lynn Cohen, Hans Ziechler, Michael Lonsdale, and Mathieu Amalric all supply great support in a well-rounded cast and flesh out great characters in this excellent, if morally ambiguous story.