Following the trend of the year, a so-so movie by previous standards

Rating: 6/10 (7 January 2006)

Munich made me scratch my head and wonder if I liked it or was indifferent about it. It sets you on a roller coaster, the good parts, true to Spielberg's roots, being the action parts that pump adrenaline into your system and shock you. The bad parts, especially the last half hour, are painfully slow and empty. My biggest problem with these parts is the lack of any sort of imagination. In the beginning and throughout its best parts, Spieberg uses neat camera tricks and well-timed scene cuts that capture the audience and make you jump in your seat. But as the movie progresses, it becomes less imaginative and more clichéd. By the end, the only thing to his credit is the Spielberg lets you feel how tense the character feels. And then the movie just ends at an unclimactic scene and then the (sadly) now typical written words scroll the story of future events to bring some sort of closure to the story. This is inexcusable after a 3 hour movie. It is amazing how the "well written" movies of our day defy the simplest rules of writing and cut the "end" out of "beginning, middle, end." The message was a cliché about the meaning of home and failed to carry any weight, especially in the end when they rush to try and force it on the audience seemingly to compensate for the action scenes. The acting, especially by Bana, was great. Geoffrey Rush didn't bring much to the table, which disappoints me, but at least he didn't take things off of it and it was fun to see him. In the end, just as War of the Worlds failed capture the imagination and magic of his previous sci-fi films, Munich lacks Schindler and Private Ryan's weight, brilliant consistency, message, and ability to stay with you beyond the walk to your car.