Munich is mesmerizing, important, and flawed.

Rating: 6/10 (1 April 2006)

Note: SPOILERS AHEAD
If looks were never deceiving, things were always as they appeared, and a book was judged solely by its cover, then Steven Spielberg's Munich would be a masterpiece of epic proportions. From a technical standpoint, it is that impressive: each shot has the camera in the ideal place to make the scene as realistic as humanly possible, and every moment is so meticulously captured that it should further cement Spielberg's status as the greatest pure filmmaker in history. However, underneath this astonishing coating is a surprisingly muddled and flawed film, one of Spielberg's weakest efforts yet.
The film's opening ten minutes, which show the kidnapping/slaughter of several Israeli athletes by a Palestinian extremist group known as Black September at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, are so remarkably filmed that they have a sort of documentary feel to them. Eventually, things calm down, and the film moves to its central story: Avner (Eric Bana), a Mossad agent, is asked by Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (Lynn Cohen) to seek revenge against those responsible. "Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises within its own values," she says, and the compromises in question clearly involve the assassination of each and every member of Black September. This mission forces Avner to leave his pregnant wife until the assassination is complete. Joining him are four men, each with his own area of expertise, such as bombs, forgery, and getaway driving, and the movie proceeds in showing their mission.
Munich, in its tense, gripping depiction of the team's mission, raises many important questions, many of which run parallel to today's Middle East conflict. For instance, is murder justified in response to murder? Is it right, in cases such as this one, to ignore the judicial process and proceed directly to the execution? At one point, Avner says "Jews don't do wrong because our enemies do wrong." Everything reverts back to the Prime Minister's original point: Do civilizations have to compromise their own values from time to time? Is it okay to mimic the actions of the very people that a nation hopes to assassinate? This film is one of the most important in recent years because it asks such questions, because Spielberg puts himself directly in between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Of course the film will elicit criticism from both sides, because it is not completely partial to either one. In this regard, Spielberg is spot on.
Where Munich falters, unfortunately, is in Spielberg's strange detachment from his characters. In other words, he allows us no entry into their souls. Aside from Avner, we learn virtually nothing about any of the other characters aside from their areas of expertise. The Israeli victims and the Palestinian extremists (many of whom are average members of the working class with families and children) are essentially useless names and faces. How many members of either group will people remember after seeing the film? I, unfortunately, remembered very few. The bottom line, the movie humanizes its main character, and the result is fascinating. Why could Spielberg not do the same thing with everyone else?
In the end, while the film is undoubtedly successful in raising extremely important questions, I simply am not buying it as a work of quality cinema. Such a film must care about all of the characters that the director and screenwriter spend enormous amounts of time fretting over, and this film cares about only one. Still, there is no denying its power at a time like this. The film's most powerful scene involves the team being booked into the same "safe house" as several members of a PLO team. After convincing the latter that the situation is safe, we move to Avner and the PLO team's leader, Ali, having a conversation by a staircase. Only then are we able to access the film's core, and everything is brought into focus. As one of them rightly says, "at the end of this, there is no peace." Everyone fights, and no matter the outcome, no one wins.