Remember the name Marie-Josee Croze

Rating: 10/10 (28 February 2006)

*** This comment may contain spoilers!!!! *** Ms. Croze plays the Dutch assassin and is a standout with only a few scenes. As far as I remember she is the only female operative in the movie but in reality all sides of the various conflicts use women. Mossad uses many women operatives in the field because they are less conspicuous than men and many groups like the Symbianese Liberation Army (which was mostly female) and Red Army, PLO, IRA, CIA, Black September are packed with women. This Mossad unit however consists of five men and they seem less than professional at times - almost every one of their attempts to kill a target seems to go wrong. Eventually 2 of them commit suicide one is murdered and the head of the unit Eric Bana goes into meltdown. Although this is definitely his best performance to date - he does seem to overact at times which is why he wasn't nominated. Daniel Craig is also good and seems to keep his head about him while the others fail. Overall this is a great Spielberg movie who fully redeems himself after such duds as War of the Worlds (a remake of a remake of a remake) and especially Artificial Intelligence which was just plain awful. The script here falls flat from time to time thanks to Tony Kushner who is a very preachy playwright (witness Angels in America) - some scenes are excellent like the ones with Golda Meir and the French informant Papa but those scenes were probably written by Eric Roth. This movie does not attempt to be a history lesson since it says it is "inspired" by actual events. Lots of dramatic license is taken like the scene where the Mossad and the PLO share the same safehouse. Would that ever actually happen? Despite some flaws like that this is a great movie worthy to stand the test of time.