30-Year old story for our times

Rating: 9/10 (13 May 2006)

Munich is based on George Jonas's book Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team.
Avner, raised in a kibbutz and a member of the Mossad, Israel's equivalent of the CIA, is appointed head of a 5-man team that is to hunt down 11 PLO terrorists following the murder of 11 members of Israel's Olympic team in Germany. There are no Schwarzeneggers on this team. Each man seems rather ordinary.
Initially, the group celebrates its victories. Toward the end of the film, Avner who has heard the tale that one of his victims lives with so much fear sleeps in a closet, winds up spending a night in one himself.
The film is a metaphor for this country's current War on Terrorism: you kill one and a half dozen more spring up in his place, some worse than the person you eliminated. There is the fact that no matter how carefully you plan to kill villains, innocents die too. The movie exposes the notion that regardless of the "righteousness" of your motives, the other guy generally has a "righteous" motive as well. The Israeli government purportedly paid one million dollars to kill 5 men on their hit list. The U.S. is spending billions, yet you wonder if the Israelis or Americans get their money's worth. Perhaps their million (like our billions) could have been spent in a way that would have mended some wounds instead of opening new ones. In the movie, those who expressed pride in the team's acts were safe, far away from the bloodshed. Finally, the movie illustrates what we should all know by now, that killing claims the highest price of all.