A spectacular suspense film that is too self-conscious for its own good

Rating: 7/10 (14 May 2006)

Munich" manages the difficult feat of presenting Steven Spielberg at his best, and at his worst, demonstrating his considerable gifts in the way of pacing, creating suspense, and generating a response from his audience while at the same time greatly underestimating the intelligence of his audience. For every moment that inspires awe, there is another that inspires a collective cringe, as the audience realizes it is being trusted with nothing, and has been lead around by its nose by a director that is so determined to make sure we get his message that he is willing to abandon all subtlety in order to do so.
SPOILER ALERT Consider: The central character in Spielberg's "Munich" is an Israeli wet-work specialist named Avner. Avner is hired, along with several other men, to enact bloody retribution against those responsible for plotting the execution of Israeli athletes at the Olympics in the early seventies. His wife is expecting a child. In one scene, we see him coordinating the murder of a Palestinian sympathizer who has a young daughter. We know he has a young daughter because she is paraded around for several minutes, exchanges significant looks with the Israeli assassins, acts cute as a button, and is serenaded by vibrant, melodramatic music. This would be bad enough in itself-- surely, the Palestinian who is to be assassinated, an articulate, even-tempered man who seems as far from a terrorist as can possibly be imagined, is sympathetic enough on his own. But no. Spielberg not only drags in the child, and uses her as a device to create suspense when it seems like she might be in the line of fire. Not only do we get a scene where Avner is waiting in the hospital for his wife to deliver her baby, as a counterpoint to the violence he has just perpetrated.
END SPOILER It's a testament to Spielberg's considerable talent that his film is able to survive such embarrassing lapses in judgment, which occur often, but are counterbalanced by the sheer momentum of the film he has created. For the most part, "Munich" is a lean, brutal, fast-paced work of art. The film is impeccably organized and structured. We begin with a galvanizing recreation of the Palestinian attack on the Munich games. Then, we are briefly introduced to Avner, and his wife. Then, Avner is given his mission, and the rest of the film, more or less, follows a rigid structure of setup, assassination/action, and reflection that would become repetitive, were it not so well-handled by Spielberg.
Did I believe what I saw? Was I convinced that it happened the way Spielberg envisions it? Not really. Mossad, the Israeli spy network, has always been an organization that takes the loyalty of its members very, very seriously. It surely would never have hired men like Karl, the reluctant, very liberal member of the team, who incessantly questions whether it is RIGHT to kill any man at all (remember, this is supposed to be an assassin!) for such a mission. Similarly, Avner, the protagonist of the film, the leader of the Israeli team, is seen to undergo a crisis of conscience as a result of his labors. I was unsurprised to learn that the real Avner has never expressed such doubts-- the book on which "Munich" is based, and Avner's own comments (he's still alive) bear this out.
Further, Spielberg is so determined not to offend any Palestinian sympathizers that we never encounter any radical Islamists-- you know, the kind that blow up buses in Jerusalem, not because they wish to liberate Palestine, but because they believe that Jews are infidels who pray to the wrong god-- indeed, we never encounter any Palestinians at all who seem more extreme than, say, Mahmoud Abbas. Avner has an extended political debate with a young Palestinian who sounds like an International Relations major from Cal-Berkeley. Even the Black September members who executed the Israeli athletes are seen as scared kids.
But I digress. The ideas behind the film take a backseat, for the most part, to the dynamic action on the screen at almost all times. Rarely has film violence been wielded so effectively. There is blood and gore, but it is brief and far from exploitive. The aftermath of a surprisingly large explosion, which leaves a body hanging from a ceiling lamp, and a confused young couple wandering around, naked, bleeding from their eyes, and seemingly waiting to be told what to do next, is incredibly well staged. The spiraling sense of doom that accompanies the latter half of the film, in which it becomes evident that no one can be trusted, the team starts to fall apart, and the effectiveness of the mission becomes increasingly called into question, is something to be experienced as well. There is a subplot that is jump started by Avner's encounter with a lonely woman at a bar that has the logic of a nightmare-- not the "War of the Worlds" kind, but the kind Scorcese created in "After Hours." Spielberg has never strayed this far from the mainstream, and it's something to witness.
In the end, I believe "Munich" is worth seeing. It's not the message movie that many have made it into. It's a gripping work that exploits all of the resources of the cinema-- sometimes to its detriment, where emotional manipulation is concerned-- and even the more conservative members of the audience should appreciate it without feeling like Spielberg is spoon-feeding them liberal propaganda. I don't see "Munich" as a pro-Palestinian polemic-- I see it as an suspense film that wants to enthrall its audience above all things but doesn't want to be accused of neglecting political correctness. Accordingly, it makes concessions, to Palestinians, to the liberal supporter of their cause, and, yes, to the audience's intelligence.