most disturbing film I've ever seen

Rating: 8/10 (2 February 2006)

This comment contains spoilers.
This film particularly shocked me with one scene in which three men murder a young woman using single shot projectile devices. I have never been so horrified by a scene and after seeing this movie I have had to remind myself that after all I was only watching actors and special effects technology in order to calm myself. It wasn't the part where blood starts pouring out of the woman's chest before they finally shoot a bullet into her brain that disturbed me but the moment where Steve calmly and gently grasps the woman's shoulder and says in a casual way 'where are you going? wait!' while he is reloading his weapon as she is slowly walking away from them in total shock having been shot by them in the chest. It horrified me to see a man acting so calmly and practically while in the process of killing a young woman. It is a moment in the film which shows a man showing an absolute absence of empathy for another human being. Even though the viewer may assume that Steve is meant to be one of the 'goodies' the relaxed way he handles this assassination can only be described as evil. Avner's handling of the assassination shows a tiniest hint of compassion for his victim when he covers up her body once they have finally killed her, while the other character's behaviour shows he feels vengeance towards her for assassinating his friend. It was also shocking to see her hugging her pet cat after being mortally wounded as this humanised her and me feel painfully empathetic for her character, it made me feel that although she was an assassin by profession underneath her hard exterior she was a sad, lonely young woman who only loved and was given love by her cat. If the men in this scene were carrying standard pistols they could have killed her almost instantly but armed only with single shot devices they fail to kill her on the first attempt and have to go through a lengthy reloading process and this prolongs the assassination and makes the scene so horrifying. I think the reason they are only armed with these devices makes sense in terms of the plot because only these devices could be smuggled by the team into the country where the female assassin lives, but I'm sure that Spielberg had a reason for making this scene so disturbing.
I don't think the scene was gratuitously violent because it shows how horrible gunshot wounds, and, in fact, violent deaths in general really are. there are plenty of highly entertaining films and TV programmes, like 'HEAT' and '24' filled with people getting shot, and they are well made, but they don't make you appreciate how horrifying the combination of bullets and human bodies really is. The whole film, particularly this scene, makes me feel that the film's message is that no one deserves to get shot or blown up, even assassins and terrorists. Assassins and terrorists are still human beings made of flesh and bone with hearts pumping blood through their bodies just like everyone else- and two wrongs don't make a right.
Avner knows by the end of the film that after his actions he can't claim moral superiority over anyone and in a world without morality he is living in a world where 'people are capable of anything'. He realises far too late at the very end of the film that the proper way to deal with the terrorists was to arrest them and gather evidence against them but this is only after he knows that all the men he has murdered will only be replaced by similarly evil characters and that one of his assassinations also resulted in an innocent woman being blinded.
I think the film's message is that vengeance, no matter how sophisticatedly carried out, is always crude, dehumanising, ultimately unfulfilling and always immoral. I think this is an admirable message and I do think think that this is an excellent film despite its traumatising content.