Coldly efficient

Rating: 6/10 (28 December 2014)

In 1972, nine Israelis are killed at the Munich Olympics. Prime Minister Golda Meir approves a covert operation to assassinate the eleven deemed responsible for the act. Avner (Eric Bana) is low level Mossad tasked to lead the secret mission. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard some two years ago, and he must leave his pregnant wife for an unknown length of time. Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush) is his case handler. The four men on his team are Steve (Daniel Craig), Carl (Ciarán Hinds) the cleaner, Robert (Mathieu Kassovitz) the bomb maker and Hans (Hanns Zischler) the documents guy. They are expendable and must deal with questionable people like Louis (Mathieu Amalric) who tracks down their targets and provide them with material.
There is a calculated coldness to the movie and Eric Bana contributes to that. I think Spielberg should have made this more emotional. The audience is detached from the characters. The action is coldly efficient without being exciting. This is not a thriller like a Bond movie. Neither is it a psychological study since Bana can't portray a tortured soul. It is very well made but I feel nothing watching it.