A good movie but not a great movie

Rating: 7/10 (4 September 2006)

The most important thing about this movie is its central message, that revenge is a circle. It is also particularly important to focus this message on middle east conflict, because as everyone knows, the rest of the world is constantly drawn into this cycle of violence. I think Spielberg has done a noble thing in going after this issue.
Also important is the criticism Spielberg makes of governments. I believe that a government should never compromise its ethics, no matter what the cause. Sadly, reality has shown us that our governments can be just as evil as the terrorists. If we become our enemy to fight them then what are we fighting for? When this happens there are no good guys, and the conflict becomes pointless.
However, the implementation of this film leaves something to be desired. I believe the violence and gore was excessive. In fact, the scene with the woman having blood squirting in a nice clean stream out of her chest was really not necessary.
Some might argue that this was realism. Of course, it might have also been realistic to have her fall backwards onto a jagged board and have her beating heart speared like an olive and spraying the whole room. Maybe we could have seen her hungry cat snacking on her liver several days later. No one could say that it probably wouldn't happen.
It appears that those in Hollywood have decided that an affective way to stimulate movie goers is to show them shocking violence. Of course, they are right, it does stimulate the mind in a primitive way. However, it is also an easy, lazy minded way to stimulate us. Much easier than actually telling a good story, making us think, or inviting us to a different reality for a couple of hours.
My other criticism of this movie, is that it moved from assassination to assassination quite linearly, and monotonously. It was like watching a long train go by and trying to read the writing on every car. After about the third one, I was loosing interest. A couple of shots of newspaper front pages for some of the killings would have been more efficient, and would have saved them a ton of money, and made the movie better.
Overall, the acting was pretty good.