Though Munich is well intentioned, its thinly-stretched plot and absurd length ultimately kill it.

Rating: 4/10 (9 January 2006)

Steven Spielberg, why? The General Gist: What could have been a gripping, provocative, inspiring thriller instead became a listless, inconvenient disaster that left this reviewer looking at her watch instead of the screen. Though the previews for the movie promised an action-packed, suspenseful saga of the revenge of the Jews in the aftermath of the 1972 Olympics, Munich turned out to be one hour of serious material, and a further one hour and forty three minutes of senseless droning.
The Good: More or less historically accurate, Munich addresses a fresh topic, which is a relief in a cinema world dominated by sequels. Though not particularly insightful on the Israeli/Pakistani conflict, the movie may get a few gears turning in the minds of movie goers who are not CNN regulars.
Also in Munich's favor is its pull-no-punches approach to the violence inspired on both the part of Avner's team and that of the nameless Palestinian threat. Definitely not appropriate for the squeamish, there is no omission of the pain that comes with war in this movie.
Cinematography: Munich shines on the big screen. Vivid coloring and slick action shots bring the story to the viewer, and the sound is clean.
The Bad: Two words: Too long. Munich drags on and on, painfully limping through enough storyline to comfortably fill an hour's worth of film. Though the action scenes are brilliantly done, there are too many of them, and they are all the same. Munich brings a Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith quality to the big screen; there are so many places where the movie could have ended, and just refused to die.
The main characters are as a whole unsympathetic. Ayalet Zorer shines as the beleaguered wife Daphna, and Mathieu Amalric is suitably slimy as Louie, and this is where the nods end. Eric Bana fails to put protagonist Avner into more than one dimension. The supporting cast, while inspiring fleeting feelings of camaraderie, isn't given enough to do. The plot regarding these characters is also a little wacky, as three of them die, two inexplicably. The 'evil' Pakistani terrorist group, Black September, fails to inspire even a twinge of dread in the audience's heart. A strange sub-plot involving a Dutch assassin serves as a reminder to Avner that he's not invincible, but it comes out of left field and forces the movie on for another thirty minutes.
The ending is another sore spot to this movie. Having lost almost his entire team to the throes of war, Avner returns to Israel for a debriefing, which he refuses to give for an unexplained reason. He has moved his wife and child away from his mother land to Brooklyn, also for uncovered motives. Stranger still, instead of exorcising his demons with meaningful dialogue or resolving what he's done with his civilian life en route to the arms of his lovely, pregnant wife, Avner finds catharsis in a series of weird flashbacks while having sex with said wife, leaving this reviewer more than a little confused. The thing that ruins the conclusion more than anything else was that there really wasn't one; the movie literally fades away into the Brooklyn sunset.
The Grade: C- Though Munich is a fresh idea and has good intentions, a thinly stretched plot and the absurd length of the movie ultimately bring it down. It's the first movie that this reviewer has ever wanted a refund for.