Spielberg goes out his comfort zone - was it worth it?

Rating: 2/10 (14 February 2006)

As someone with limited sympathy for the politics of either Israel or Palestine, I went to see this film with no little degree of trepidation. As the film got under way, I felt I might be pleasantly surprised. It was a thriller, based on a historical incident, and well-told. With the demise of the Cold War, stories about secret service plots, espionage and counter-intelligence seem too few on the ground, and criticising a Spielberg film for being pro-Jewish seems as silly as criticising James Bond for being pro-British.
The film takes the 1972 terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the Olympic games in Munich as its starting point and then follows one of the hit squads assigned to revenge the attack (it is based on a book that straddles fiction and non-fiction lists called 'Vengeance').
As targets are identified - some of them a bit too old to have been the young Munich assassins - they are wiped out with varying degrees of skill, lack of skill, or bungling. The assassinations generally inflict unintended civilian casualties, and the assassinated are quickly replaced - often by better and more numerous terrorists.
Avner, the leader of our hit-squad sent by Israel's intelligence service (Mossad), eventually starts to succumb to doubts about the legitimacy, effectiveness and morality of the operation, as well as general paranoia (some of which seems reasonable) about whether the mercenaries selling him information are also selling information about his own whereabouts to enemies, or whether Mossad will endanger him and his family if he chooses not to take further missions.
This is where it all goes badly astray. Spielberg excels as a storyteller, not as a philosopher. With the remarkable Schindler's List, he told a story of bravery, of the non-violent and successful resistance and escape from the Nazis. The heroes were clearly defined and worthy of universal admiration. With Munich, he forces us to consider the current Middle East situation, where neither side is universally considered blameless. Avner's musings about the wrongness of violence are unconvincing and impotent. Although the film includes a few shots of Palestinian hardship, it nevertheless came across to me as a confused apologia for Israeli over-retaliation - in a similar ilk to Oliver Stone's cancellation of US guilt in Vietnam in 'Born on the Fourth of July' ('it was bad but necessary / well-intended, so let's move on').
Spielberg said he wanted the athletes to be remembered - but the film hardly shows them - you would be hard pressed to remember their names or anything about them from watching Munich. The martyrdom process that both the terrorists and Israeli assassins engender however is dwelt on for over two hours. It has come in for criticism from the Israeli government and the author of the book on which it is based. Spielberg said he hoped the film would produce discussion - it probably has and will, but possibly not of a useful or constructive kind. This, however, is my very personal view. By raising questions it might conceivably arouse productive debate within the Jewish community. My low rating is because it left such a bad taste in my mouth.