Good but middling acting

Rating: 8/10 (22 March 2006)

I was hopeful that Mr. Spielberg would take a stance recognizing the plight of Palestinians, and while not endorsing suicide bombing, understand the circumstances that give rise to it. Again, this is not an endorsement of suicide bombing. It is wrong and harmful and only perpetuates the violence and ensures that more Palestians (and more Israelis...and more Palestinians...and more Israelis....and more Palestinians...and more Israelis) will die. However I was hopeful that, in contrast to many corporate media outlets, that the Palestinain plight, and the political weakness of their position, not to mention their poverty and occupied land, would be recognized by Mr. Spielberg.
I had not wanted to hear what happened in this film so that I could watch it with no expectations (somewhat similarly to how one tries to see a film before reading the book so one doesn't compare it (and usually unfavorably) to the book). Unfortunately I heard or read somewhere that Spielberg did depict the Palestinians at least as wronged people and gave some sense of reality to their plights. I must admit, as the Mossaad operatives went about their business just taking people out at great cost and often with others caught in the crossfire also dying, I wondered at what point (and whether what I'd heard was right) that the operatives might realize that bloody vengeance was so destructive and inefficient.
I must admit, I was not at all impressed by Eric Bana. I think he had about the expressiveness of the shoes that I have on right now. Yeah, he was playing a stoic guy, an everyman type chosen by Mossad specially because he was so everyman looking. But nevertheless, I found that even when it seemed that the continuous retaliatory killings were going on forever, even when you could see that it was taking its toll on him, while he looked somewhat more gaunt, I didn't think he expressed very much at all. Geoffrey Rush (travelling back in time to look like Henry Kissinger?) was as vicious and soulless a government contact as one could imagine. He was truly, it seemed, incapable of expressing any concern or shades of emotion about the plight of his agents or the worthiness of their mission.
As mentioned, it seemed it took a while for the plot to seize one and for the toll of revenge killings to take effect on the men. However I think that Spielberg's approach was fairly successful. I must admit the cloudiness of the motivations of the funders of the revenge hits mystified me. Perhaps the fact that he employed plastic that was stronger than the group had wanted was Spielberg's point-that an open-ended terror mission really can have no positive outcome-but I was a bit puzzled that a man (Avner) who should have known that his was a very nationalistic mission, would trust someone who he knew nothing about, to fund his mission. I'm not sure just who Papa (Michael Lonsdale) could also have been working for. Obviously doing such divisive, controversial work would limit the numbers of parties he could have been working for, but at the same time, if he really believed in Avner's mission, could he really have had so little soul that he would have agreed to fund people who were working in opposition ===to===== Avner? Then again, I guess they were probably that opportunistic. Also, Papa's chat with Avner, the sort of "don't trust anyone, don't ask too many questions, etc." seemed amazingly banal and after-school-movie-of-the-week-ish. Also, I questioned Avner's paranoia about Mossad possibly being out to take him out. I guess he might have been paranoid and that might have influenced him but it just seemed that he was extremely irrational. Sure, he knew better than anyone how ruthless Mossad was but that seemed completely nonsensical, no matter what he'd said to Ephrain or how he'd butted into the office of the Israeli embassy.
So overall, a good film, powerful, pretty fair; still, I must admit, for such a big-budget picture, Bana was very unimpressive. I think Spielberg makes his points fairly persuasively though and illustrates with his account of one (important) story, the futility of "vengeance". Also, the use of the flashbacks as nightmares for Avner was, I thought, an effective way to show the violence of September 1972 and also reveal how such speculation on Avner's part (what he was doing for Israel) might have haunted him. Additionally, OK, before I jabber on a bit more, I think the commitment of Avner to do anything for Israel was not really indicated because it seemed odd that such an apparently mild guy (even though he had been a premier leader) would be willing to sign off on such an open-ended, ill-defined mission. It is reasonable that he would do this but given the depth of character that we see, it doesn't seem believable that Avner was such an ideologue. Again, this goes back to the limited range of Bana's performance. OK, really, I'm done now.