A movie with the right amount of tension and excitement, one of Spielberg's best

Rating: 8/10 (29 April 2007)

I had seen this movie before like over a year ago and now I watched it again last night. I like to think this is one of Spielberg's best works yet to date. Well it can be a bit dull at places, but it's still a great movie.
There's this certain tension throughout the movie, it's exciting and interesting. The whole story is very well put together and it has great characters. What comes to the role performances I think it's Eric Bana's best role performance yet to date. He also fits in the role like a blanket on a bed, he's pretty perfect in it. In my opinion the whole casting is succeeded very well. Other Mossad group members are played by Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz and Hanns Zischler and they seem to be just the right actors for the right parts. We also see Geoffrey Rush in the role of Ephraim, which is pretty nice after constantly remembering him as Barbossa from some kind of a reason.
The plot has enough twists and tweaks in it and though it's not of course so exciting as for the first time, I still enjoyed it very much. It's very believable, realistic. It's also intelligent with its twists and as we go towards the ending, it still has this certain energy, tension and surprises to keep you interested all the time. The screenplay's very good, but it's still nothing phenomenal, because of its (sad to say) dullness in places. Could be because I had seen the movie before, but I still would have liked some fillings here and there. Is it even necessary to talk about the directing? Well, it's Steven Spielberg and once again I think the directing is fantastic. Some of the parts are just so exciting you stand up and watch the whole scene without even blinking an eye. Just superb.
The movie was nominated for 5 Oscars: For "Best Achievement in Directing", "Best Achievement in Editing", "Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)", "Best Motion Picture of the Year" and "Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay" and it still makes me sad that it didn't win any of the categories. It sure would have deserved at least one Oscar, as if you look at the movie in its wholeness, the pieces are put together very well and the movie doesn't struggle in any way imaginable. The music is composed by the all mighty John Williams and you can't go wrong there now can you? The music's still not in so big role after all, but it's still in the right places and it's great. There's no actual main theme or beauty worth mentioning in the music, it just fits in the movie in its own way so well that it just makes your heart beat faster. Especially in the so called "action" -parts there's this same music always playing, building up the tension when the other sound is cleverly put in the background. Even when the music's so simple in those parts, it's still so great.
This is definitely a movie worth seeing. I agree that I should have reviewed this back then when I watched it for the first time, but later's better than never, right? Anyways, if you want to enjoy a good Drama/Thriller, then this's the movie you want to watch. It is very successful when it comes to those genres, both Drama and Thriller. There's some action in it too, but it still doesn't make it an action movie, or at least in my opinion it doesn't. It's just a great movie.